


Elektra

by candelabrum



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Character Death, F/F, Girl Direction, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Character Death, No Sex, Supernatural Elements, Violence, some diet culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-02-11 22:12:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12945108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candelabrum/pseuds/candelabrum
Summary: Harry is so very exhausted. She has been for a while and nothing has really changed, but she decides to take a break.A somewhat cracky Girl Direction Elektra AU in which Harry is Elektra who was supposed to be dead but isn't and the middle of nowhere turns out to be a lot less solitary than she had planned.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to the 2005 film Elektra, which this is somewhat based on, but also to Jon Ronsons book "The Men who stare at goats", which is where some of the supernatural elements are taken from. Credit and big thanks to my beta Moon for helping me with my commas, and everything else. Thanks to everyone I've ever talked about this with and all the kind encouragement I recieved.
> 
> A few warnings: There is death, there is quite a bit of blood and violence. I'm genuinely sorry for all the people depicted as Bad in this. Please tell me if I should tag and/or mention anything else.

The man is a nervous wreck. Quite pathetic really for him to be what this has been leading up to. A rapid heartbeat, accompanied by one last bodyguard, who isn’t even heavily armed. There’s a chance being on the run from an invincible myth for months on end does that to you, makes you a bit of a pathetic, almost pitiful mess. Harry wouldn’t know.

A fire is crackling in the fireplace of this remote, until a few minutes ago suspiciously heavily guarded, old monastery. The man of the hour, the mess, is sitting in an armchair right in front of it facing away from Harry. His last bodyguard, the personal one, is lying on the ground right next to the door. Throat slit, maybe a little too deep, the blood gushing out onto the stone floor. The man, a fancy glass of whiskey clutched in a shaky hand, is next. He knows. Harry knows that he knows. Everyone is generally pretty well informed. 

Harry strolls towards the armchair a long, blood-stained sword in each hand. He is still facing the fire, gazing into it. All a bit dramatic, if you ask Harry. Clichéd.

This has been over, nothing but mere necessities - and a large dash of theatrics on his side -, ever since Harry got to this place and for once didn’t find it already vacant. At the screen of the first security camera turning to back they had both known that their cat-and-mouse game was going to end today.

“So it’s true then,” he breathes and Harry usually lets them have their dramatic last moments like this, but she’s starting to get bored. She just wants to get this over with. “what they say.”

The invincible myth, that’s her. That’s Harry. She’s a magical being. A myth, but living, breathing flesh. Living, breathing, reanimated flesh to be precise, so she’s almost like a zombie. She sees him turn around in his chair - because obviously, it’s a spinning chair - before it actually happens and is right next to him when he does. It takes him a moment to realize Harry is looming over him to his left, both of her swords millimeters from ending his life. He looks shocked, but not surprised.

“I didn’t think,” he swallows and takes a second to look her up and down furrowing his eyebrows. He twirls the alcohol in his glass. It’s just amber liquid at this point, no ice cubes left, if there were any to begin with. “I thought you’d be wearing, like -- less.”

Harry sighs. 

No, she doesn’t walk around in lingerie and a cape on her job. It’s December for god's sake. She is wearing black jeans, a simple black long-sleeve, her favourite long winter coat - also black - and an assortment of decidedly sharp objects. For this one she doesn’t use any of them though. Harry focuses in on his stupidly erratic heartbeat, concentrates, and makes it stop.

***

Harry is taking a break from her routine of re-sharpening her weapons and eliminating all her traces from the place that was rented for the duration of her job. She’d been cleaning the same spot on the abstract artwork of a coffee table in the middle of the living room for at least fifteen minutes. Which is also where she had started her cleaning. The hued glass plate is as shiny and translucent as ever in that spot.

This one is a spacious cottage in the middle of a deep green forest, also known as the middle of nowhere. It is right next to a lake and far away from any civilization, except for the one house on the other side of the lake. Or more like a few dozen meters over. Jeff let himself in and started looking around the place, complementing it like Harry had anything to do with the interior design. 

“I like the windows.” 

They are big and let in a lot of sunlight when it is not one in the morning. Harry doesn’t really care. She stands up, picks up her spray flask of cleaning agent from the floor and heads towards the kitchen area. It’s not a room of its own, just an area.

“I think there’s a grotto upstairs,” she says.

“Oh really?”

“Mhm, I’m pretty sure.” She lets her cleaning rag fall into the sink, sets down the flask, takes off her rubber gloves, and throws them into the sink, too. “Right next to like - some reading room.” She turns around and leans against the counter.

”How are you?”

“Tired.” It’s her standard answer, but it’s also true. Stopping hearts is one of the most tiring things she can do. Everything always has a repercussion, but she doesn’t really notice it for the simpler things anymore. That’s why she usually doesn’t use that particular trick, it’s bigger, it takes a lot more.

“You should sleep then,” Jeff says sounding worried. Jeff is Harry’s agent. As her agent it is part of his job description to worry about Harry and her functionality, but Jeff is also the closest thing she has to a friend. Actual friends aren’t part of her job description.

It’s not like Harry doesn’t sleep, she just hasn’t been sleeping very well lately. Frantic anxiety yanking her out of her dreams. Sometimes in the middle of the night, other times seconds before her alarm goes off. She only remembers flashes of her dreams and they don’t make much sense, but apparently, they are scary. That fear, however irrational, tends to linger after she’s woken up. What she really needs is rest.

“I’ve, you know, still got some cleaning to do. And sharpening my swords and all that. Do you have the money?” 

“The money, of course. Always.” Jeff puts his briefcase on the island counter in the middle of the kitchen area and opens the combination locks. “Minus, my share obviously.” He winks at her as the locks spring open, and he thinks he’s being genuinely funny. Harry doesn’t have the energy to fake a laugh or tell him he isn’t.

“Your share, the company’s, administration fees, accommodation, packaging, copy paper. Yeah, I get it,” she says. It’s their usual script. Jeff just rolls his eyes. He steps aside from the briefcase.

 

“I’ve got a new job for you by the way,” he says, pointing a finger at Harry as if he’d just remembered. “It’d be a perfect fit. Perfect. And a huge one.” He’s looking at her now, hopeful.

“I don’t know.” Harry really is incredibly tired.

“Just think about it,” Jeff tries.

This last job had taken way too long. It had brought her back to the UK, just to chase her around it for three months, which is kind of impressive, because it’s the UK. Yes, she had done smaller assignments on the side, but it had still taken three bloody months to kill one middle-aged wreck of a man. She tries to remember the last time she didn’t wake up exhausted just to go to bed restless that same night, or day, or morning. Maybe she isn’t up for another job yet, especially not another big one. 

“Have I mentioned it’s enormous?”

“More than enough Jeff, but I doubt that.”

“Hey.”

“Maybe, I should take a break. You said it yourself, just...sleep for a bit.” Or something like that. She pushes herself from the counter and starts walking into the hallway through a rounded archway. Jeff follows her.

“You know, they will find someone else to do it.”

 

“No one as good as me,” Harry says gesturing towards the door. She is smirking at Jeff or at least trying to. She’d hold the door open for him, but Harry doesn’t do that. Instead, she just leans against the wall slouching slightly. The openness of this place unsettles her a little.

 

“They will.”

“Goodbye Jeff.” Harry sighs, and gives him a shove towards the door. He finally leaves. He is not that bad, but he is still Harry’s agent and primarily that. All he cares about at the end of the day is maximum profit. That’s what he’s good at.

Harry is tempted to go back to the kitchen sink to get her cleaning utensils and get to work on cleaning the house, but apparently, she’s on holiday now. Which means she’ll be actually living here.

***

It’s Harry’s first time taking time off from work, her first day, and she isn’t entirely sure what she’s supposed to do. She would sleep for a week straight if she could. Maybe she should just lie down on the couch instead and wait for rest to eventually come around and take her over. It’s bound to happen eventually.

Jeff sends her a seasonal gift basket full of chocolate Santas, Christmas biscuits and other festive treats. It smells like cinnamon and sugar. There’s also a Christmas flower in the basket. It’s just the plant though, without a flower pot or instructions. Harry plans to look for a pot later, given it will survive that long. For now she lets a tentative amount of water slowly seep into the dry earth and places it in the centre of the kitchen island.

She hides the rest of the basket as far back in one of the kitchen’s cupboards as possible. No need to slack off on her health just because she’s taking a break. 

She ends up doing her cleaning routine anyway.

***

It’s never the same place, but it always feels the same, every time. Sometimes she’s watching herself. Sometimes she isn’t. There’s never enough air. Not enough air at all. A million little shreds and she isn’t dead yet. Forever struggling to breathe. The shreds dance with the vibrations of the floor right in front of her eyes. She closes her eyes. They keep dancing with every thud. A thud, a billion pieces of glass clinking against each other and the floor. She knows what’s about to happen and it only makes her panic faster, more frantically. 

Harry wakes up, heart racing and it’s already slipping from her memory again. She lets it.

***

Harry takes a deep breath of fresh countryside air while overlooking the dark lake in front of her. It smells of pine trees and moss, but mostly it smells cold. She is standing on the porch of her temporary house, bare feet comfortably rooted on her familiar yoga mat. She stretches her arms over her head from one side to the other, cracking her shoulders in a delicious stretch. If she hadn’t just spent the last half hour or so meditating she would have probably still noticed, but she wouldn’t have seen it coming.

There’s a flash of very fast movement in the house behind her. A mob of light brown hair and Harry is back inside the living room in a matter of milliseconds, instinctively grabbing the next best sharp thing. Her throw isn’t aiming to kill. It’s still precise and the decorative glass candle stand hits the wall in the hallway and shatters, barely missing the intruder’s neck. It falls to the ground in a thousand little pieces, but Harry has the girls attention now. She looks shocked, like she is frozen in place. Good.

Harry grabs two knives from the knife block on the kitchen counter on her way to the hallway. They don’t weigh the same, and one of them is a bread knife. She prefers them the same and more along the lines of swords, but she’s nothing if not flexible. At least their weight is well distributed. A couple of years of excelling at her job, and a lack of restful sleep tell her to just throw the damn knifes and get it over with, but she is not on a job, is she. She is officially on break after all. 

Harry takes an impatient breath.

The intruder looks up at her through wide, unblinking eyes as Harry approaches her. She raises one knife warningly when she starts to get fidgety as Harry comes closer. “Hey,” she says accusingly instead of Who are you?, or Get out of my house, or I’ll throw and not be so generous as to miss this time, or instead of actually just throwing one of her knifes.

“I’m just -” the girl starts. She looks nervous, but she keeps up the eye contact, except for a dramatic eye-roll. She finishes her almost stagy roll of the eyes with a faint pant. “The door was open. I was…”

It wasn’t. Harry doesn’t correct her though, just waits and watches her fish for words to fill in the rest of the sentence.

“I usually come around here.” 

The confidence in her voice grows with every word of the statement. 

Harry stays silent, still watching her as she considers what to do. It really is only a girl from up close, but Harry knows not to underestimate girls, young or not. She keeps talking with all the appropriate facial expressions, and Harry can’t quite figure out her agenda. If she even has one. Perhaps out here in the wild somewhere, there are still teenagers, who are just that; teenagers, and not highly trained super assassins, or thieves.

“This is my house.”

“Oh really?” 

Really long, deep black, spindly lashes blink at Harry with the innocence of a dozen puppies and it’s all too well played, too perfect. Like Harry just walked straight into her set up. She knows a trap when she sees one and she’s pretty sure that she just waltzed right into one. “We live next door, and the old owners used to -”

“The old owners, exactly. They don’t own this house anymore,” Harry says. She’s sure that the girl is lying to her, but this is not one of her jobs. It’s just her new teenager of a neighbor potentially going through her rebellious phase or something. Teenagers lie. It seems like a normal thing to do not to kill your neighbor. “I do. Now leave, would you. Please.”

The girl slowly extracts herself from the situation, mindful of the shreds of glass lying on the floor around her. They crunch under the soles of her shoes. As soon as she is at the door she bolts and Harry is left alone again. 

She heads into the kitchen to try and find a brush or a broom. Cleaning up messes isn’t usually her job, but it’s part of what she does, and knows, as opposed to normal social situations apparently. The ones where no one is supposed to die over the course of them. The Christmas star looks wrong on the kitchen top. Out of place and drowning in the nothingness of open space. Just wrong.

***

Harry is looking at her Christmas star, still in need of a flower pot, over her third cup of tea that morning, when Charlotte is back. 

Her name is Charlotte. Harry knows that, because a woman had come over the same day Charlotte had broken into Harry’s house, introduced herself as Louis and apologized repeatedly for the incident. She carried herself with the same calculated innocence, but Harry is starting to suspect that she’s just gotten too used to trusting no one at this point. Maybe she just automatically projects a secret agenda onto everyone she meets. She’s had plenty of time to think about that.

She walks up to the door that leads to her porch, mug in hand. It’s a few days later and Charlotte is back, jumping from stone to stone in Harry’s garden this time. The stones are arranged in a spiral. It’s supposed to be decorative or something. She halts when she spots Harry, a wide smile spreading on her face.

“Hi.” Charlotte waves.

Harry walks out into the garden, towards her. She has decided that she doesn’t need knifes to face her this time. It’s not like she would need knives to kill Lottie, but that’s not the point. The point is that Harry has decided to go for normal. Non-threatening.

“Listen, I wanted to say sorry again. For the other day.”

“Nothing says sorry quite like trespassing,” a pause “again.” 

“I only did to apologize.” Charlotte shrugs as if her intention cancels it all out. As if it’s almost obvious that that makes it ok.

“Your -- Louis already apologized a couple hundred times.” Which is only a bit of an exaggeration. Harry didn’t count, but Louis had been very adamant at convincing Harry that they are usually the most peaceful and agreeable of neighbours. “It’s quite sorted.”

“Good.” There’s a pause. Charlotte just smiles at her. Harry has come to stand in front of her and with her on top of a stone they are almost the same height, and maybe that’s a nice metaphor, or visualisation. Both of them equally non-threatening. “So…,” she jumps off the stone ruining Harry’s metaphor. ”do you have any plans, any company coming over or are you just going to be alone tomorrow?”

Harry doesn’t answer.

“Because we’re going to be celebrating. The two of us - Louis and I. Just us. It’s pretty boring is what it is, to be honest. And you could come if you wanted to.”

“What are you celebrating?”

“Christmas.”

“Oh.” Harry had totally forgotten about that. She’s silent for a moment, pretty sure that it’s an awkward kind of silence. “Could have been Hanukkah. Or something Celtic.”

Charlotte doesn’t laugh. Neither with nor about Harry, which at least isn’t bad. Instead, she furrows her eyebrows for a moment before she asks chipperly: “So, are you coming?”

“Listen, uhm. Charlotte - “

“Lottie.” She extends her hand towards Harry and Harry shakes it. Lottie has a firm, warm handshake.

“Hi, Lottie. I don’t want to intrude. I don’t really-” 

“Louis practically told me to come over and invite you if you’re worrying. Like I said, it’s just us. And it tends to get boring around here. So, like… around six tomorrow? It’s going to be fun, promise,” she says, turns to leave and then turns around to face Harry again, “Oh, and it’s Lou’s birthday as well. Thought you should know.” And just like that, with a wink and another smile she’s on her way off of Harry’s property again, jumping from stone to stone, the way she’d come. 

So, Harry’s going to need Christmas presents now. And a birthday present. 

***

On Christmas day, Harry receives two texts from Jeff. One wishing her a merry Christmas and a relaxing holiday. Another one almost right after asking whether she really doesn’t want to take this job with a winking smiley. Harry sends back some generic seasonal greetings phrase and ignores the second text.

***

At exactly 18:03 Harry is standing in front of her neighbor's house, last minute gifts wrapped in standard printing paper under her arm. At least it’s the 80g paper. It’s the fanciest thing she could find. She’d gone for the seasonal basket she had gotten from Jeff, minus the Christmas star - because she’d actually grown fond of the plant over her morning tea -, a carafe, and a framed picture of waves crashing around a lighthouse she’d taken down from her bedroom wall. Other options had included pine cones from the forest or something self-made, like poetry or banana muffins.

This might have been a bad idea.

The doorbell doesn’t have a name tag to it, but it definitely works. It rings shrilly through the idyllic quietness of nature around her when Harry pushes the button down.

After a short silence, there’s the sound of steps walking up to the door, so quietly any normal person wouldn’t have been able to hear. Then there’s another silence and Harry is pretty sure that it was a bad idea to tell Lottie she’d come, but just as she had come to that conclusion the door opens halfway. Then a little more.

“Hello.”

Louis, it seems, hadn’t expected her. You can almost hear the suppressed question mark at the end of her greeting. She is standing in the doorframe dressed in a bright red sweater that has actual tinsel hanging from it, a glittery golden band with stars that looks like it could actually just be gift ribbon sitting crookedly on her head adorning her short hair. She looks at Harry expectantly, a frown starting to form alongside the smile on her face as she tilts her head to the side.

“Hi.” Harry smiles back and kind of really regrets coming over. This is so not her crowd. Her kind of crowd is more like Jeff...or empty rooms. Or rooms full of dead people more often than not actually. Same difference. Blanking, but determined not to let it show and let the situation turn awkward, Harry starts singing:

“Happy birthday to you,” she sings under her breath.

Now Louis just looks confused. There is no backing out though. 

“Happy birthday to you.”

Harry grows more confident and louder with every note. 

“Happy birthday dear Louis…” Harry holds up a finger stretching out the last syllable as she bends down to get a proper, just slightly exaggerated look at the doorbell. There isn’t a name tag though. She’d forgotten about that. “...my neighbour.”

Lottie has come to the door as well now and is standing behind Louis.

“Happy birthday to Lou!” Harry ends with a grand crescendo that rivals the doorbell, and a bow. If that is how this evening is going to be, it’s going to be exhausting. 

“Thanks,” Louis says. “It was yesterday.” She leans forward, looking Harry up and down suspiciously. “What do you have with you there?” 

“Presents.”

 

“Aha.” Louis smiles. It’s more mischievous than suspicious. A smirk really. “Birthday, or Christmas?”

“Both.”

“You’re allowed in then.” She steps aside, holding the door open for Harry. “Come on in, welcome.”

Louis tells her to take off her shoes and persists on hanging up Harry’s coat while Lottie takes the presents from her.

She is led a short way into the living room and told to make herself comfortable. There is one door that leads outside and four windows she has seen so far that could serve as a fairly easy exit. The house most likely also has a backdoor. No second floor, at least two exploitable fire hazards. Harry tells her brain to shut up.

***

Everything is warm and bright inside, with almost blinding amounts of shiny, gold and silver decorations. It looks a bit like Harry just walked into a Christmas themed Ikea add. Very homey. There are magazines and plants on side tables, glittery stars hung on the walls and acoustic versions of Christmas songs are softly playing in the background. Harry’s presents are sitting right next to colourfully - predominantly red, green and gold - wrapped presents, under a richly adorned Christmas tree. The tree’s decoration doesn’t have a theme to it.

Harry is not allowed to help with anything. Which is good. She isn’t sure what she could help them with. Louis and Lottie are not her usual crowd, and this is not really her thing. She can cook, sure, but she hasn’t celebrated Christmas in years. Since she’s not allowed to help, Harry ends up looking around the living room.

Right now she is sitting in a very comfortable red armchair, sipping tea that tastes like cinnamon and chocolate from a large cup. The tea is hot. Louis and Lottie flit back and forth between the kitchen and the dining table standing in one corner of the living room. They occasionally make small talk and ask her a question and Harry yells an answer to Louis and Lottie, who are already on their way somewhere else again.

She pretends not to hear when Lottie curses about the mashed potatoes burning, or when Louis argues with Lottie in hushed voices. It’s not eavesdropping, just a habit to be alert when in unknown environments and Harry doesn’t do it entirely on purpose. (“Why’d you invite her? Which part of distance, and normal neighbours did you not understand?” “You can’t hide from everyone, Lou. Now that would be suspicious if you ask me. I’m being a perfectly normal neighbour.” “It’s not -- you’re being reckless.” “Normal.” “You could have at least told me. Warned a girl.”)

There are pictures on the walls of flowers and sunsets, a collage of photos of pasta, but never people. Harry tries to picture the lighthouse with the crashing waves she brought hanging amongst them.

…

“What’s your favourite colour?” Lottie asks.

Harry gives it a thought before answering, a genuine thought. This is how it has been going. Lottie has been asking her a lot of questions and Harry isn’t sure if that is only to make her feel included and more comfortable, or if Lottie is genuinely interested in her. It’s the first time in a while she’s had to lie about her job, which is usually why people talk to her in the first place. This one is tamer. “Black,” she says.

“Black is not a colour,” Lottie says.

Harry wants to protest and say that it is. You can see it, so it has to be a colour. She almost does, but she waits too long and Louis speaks up first.

“So,” she interrupts the silence through a fork full of mashed potatoes. “what brought you here?” 

“You mean the middle of nowhere?” Harry is reminded of her own food. She is eating her second serving of romanesco broccoli with different sauces. She’d briefly considered telling them that she usually doesn’t eat dairy, or refined sugar, but decided against it. Instead she just eats twice as many vegetables as everyone else. 

Louis nods and hums, mouth full.

“Work,” Harry answers dunking a piece of broccoli into her mashed potatoes this time. “I decided to take some time off. From work. Christmas, you know.”

“No work for you?”

“Nope.”

“Why would you choose here for a holiday?” Lottie asks. 

“It’s not that bad, is it.”

“Pretty boring. It gets lonely here,” Lottie says.

“You’ve been living here for a while, haven’t you.” Harry sips on her water. 

Louis is...Harry doesn’t quite know. She is bright when she talks to Lottie, even when she takes off the tinsel from around her head, and funny. She keeps Looking at Harry, keeps her eyes glued on Harry nearly all the time. By the time they do Christmas crackers she feels like Louis has relaxed a little. Accepted her a little maybe. She is still watching Harry a lot. 

Harry wants to say that she absolutely can’t sing when Louis brings up singing Christmas songs, but her little rendition of happy birthday proved her willingness to do it anyway. It’s not like she is terrible. Harry is decent. She can hold a tune. She’d just rather not.

Louis persists that carols are an important tradition, and while Harry’s opinion doesn’t really count, Lottie doesn’t have a chance in convincing her otherwise either, so they sing. 

After three uncoordinated tries at Oh Christmas tree - in honor of not only their Christmas tree but also the forest full of conifers just outside the door - they give up. Louis with a pout that morphs into a small smile contradicting her complaints, Lottie with a sigh of relief and a roll of her eyes, and Harry with a smile, probably. She tries for one at least. Louis turns the acoustic Christmas music back on and comes back with more Christmas crackers.

“I want some jokes,” she says handing one to Lottie and another one to Harry. She turns around a chair from the dining table and sits down. “I want to laugh about how bad and nonsensical they are. Amuse me.”

Lottie reads out her joke. When Louis laughs, Lottie smiles.

Then Louis turns around and looks at Harry. Harry opens her Christmas cracker. She fishes out the little piece of paper with the joke on it and straightens it out in front of her face.

“Put on the hat,” Louis demands.

It’s a flimsy blue paper crown and Louis smiles contentedly when Harry puts it on her head like she is the one wearing a crown here. An actual crown. Harry brings the joke up to her face again. She starts giggling before she has even started reading it out.

“Why does,” she says grinning at the words stupidly. The longer she waits the more she feels an irrational pressure building up. The joke is horrible, she already knows that. Harry bites her lip. “Why does the bamboo ask the giraffe ‘Why do you have such a long face?’ Because it thought the giraffe’s neck was its face.”

Louis looks affronted almost, but she ends up laughing disbelievingly and shaking her head. “Enough,” she says. “Enough, how about presents?” Maybe Louis is warming up to Harry.

Christmas presents are opened as one of the very last things. It’s a Tomlinson tradition, because apparently the wait is always the best part. They are sitting on the floor around the Christmas tree, going around in turns opening one present each. There is not much space in the corner of the room because of the size of the Christmas tree, but they deal. Lottie decides to sit on a pillow she gets from Louis. It has a beautiful peacock on it. 

They are drinking mulled wine, having had switched to it after dinner. Harry had never drunk mulled wine before and she is pleasantly surprised. It is technically her turn to open a present now, but it’s not like she expects one. She takes another sip.

“I obviously didn’t get you anything.” Louis throws balled up wrapping paper from the present she had opened earlier Lottie’s way. It hits her shoulder. 

“I’m an excellent thrower.” Lottie points a finger at Louis, grinning. She doesn’t throw anything back though, just gets up on all fours to look through the presents under the tree. 

Louis sticks out her tongue, red from the mulled wine, even though Lottie can’t possibly see it. The way she does it makes her nose crinkle. “I hope you at least got a present for Harry. All the pressure's on you now.” 

“Just took one I’d bought for you. Easy enough.” She produces a green present with a gold bow and little Christmas trees in a lighter shade of green on it and hands it to Harry. It’s also got a little card. “I didn’t. Merry Christmas.”

Lottie had invited her yesterday, so even if this present hadn’t initially been intended for Louis, it was very last minute. Just like Harry’s poor excuses for Christmas presents. Harry reads the card first. It’s got a golden feather on one side. On the other side it simply says Merry Christmas, Harry in a handwritten font. That alone is lovely.

Inside the present is a soft, plaid scarf, and a wine red journal. Harry doesn’t really know what to do. She thanks her and they move on with the presents.

Louis gets two books and chocolates from Lottie. She offers to share the Chocolate with Harry in the name of Christmas. Harry declines, and Louis thanks her for it. 

***

Lottie and Louis both hug her goodbye. Harry leaves with her presents under her arm and the paper crown from her last Christmas cracker still on her head.

Christmas leaves Harry wanting more.

***  
The next few days are dull. Harry waters her Christmas star and watches a few of the leaves turn ocherous at the tips. She does yoga and she meditates like always. On the 28th she calls Jeff to tell him that her time off is officially over. 

She does think about Christmas. A lot actually. A new job means she’ll have to move and leave Lottie and Louis behind. She’s a minuscule bit tentative about ending that new thing already, but that voice is just a quiet echo that gets lost in her giant house. She’ll say goodbye later and go back to her life.

Jeff arrives with two long rings of the doorbell, one right after the other.

“I heard you’re off your holiday again, Hershel?” Jeff says as soon as Harry opens the door. He’s sporting a big smile that’s all artificially whitened teeth, and there’s a glint in his eyes. He resembles a dog from a pedigrees commercial.

“Yeah, it’s not really working for me,” Harry shrugs and gestures for Jeff to come in. “Do you want something to drink or like?”

“Ah no, I’m actually on the run.” He makes some sort of wild spiral-y gesture with his hands, briefcase swaying in the air with the motion. “The change of plans, and all that. Things to organize and sort. People to call. Just here to drop off your case.”

He fishes out a file from his briefcase and hands it over. He wishes her good luck, turns around, his gray trench coat flying behind him, and then he’s gone again. Harry is actually a little disappointed. She’d hoped for a bit of a chat. Their usual meaningless standard phrases at least.

She closes the door and heads for the sofa. It’s a regular light brown file. This one is number 2302. She leafs through it, then opens it to the first page and Jeff definitely hadn’t lied about the dimensions of it, at least not when it comes to the pay. It’s almost double the amount that her last job had been. That one had been a tenacious number. 

The information is incomplete. 

She hasn’t even read it yet and she can already tell. Words and passages have been blacked out and Harry is pretty sure there are whole pages missing. Which is...curious. It’s not like Harry usually gets a lot of information. She receives the basics, everything relevant to killing the target and she doesn’t ask for more. No reasonings, or incentives of anyone involved. It’s not her job to have an opinion.

She gets up and makes herself a cup of tea. Maybe the missing bits are why the pay on this one is so high. It’s definitely not an easing herself back into it kind of thing. That’s not necessarily bad.

She waits for the water to boil and for the tea to brew before she takes it back to the living room area where the file is still opened to page one on the coffee table. 

The first thing she focuses on are the things that aren’t there. Not the several pages that seem to be missing, but the blacked out paragraphs. It looks like a job left half done, like the blackened parts are people checked off a list almost.

The second thing that catches her eye and burns is the second name on the second page. One that hasn’t been blacked out. “Louis W. Tomlinson”. Which absolutely has to be a coincidence, fate playing a cruel prank on her. And the chances of that aren’t bad. She tries to think back to the doorbell and whether there was a name plate anywhere, but there wasn’t. She doesn’t even know Louis’ last name. She can’t stop staring though and the name is burning itself onto her retina: Louis W. Tomlinson. Her target.

Underneath the name is some basic information that isn’t specific enough to draw any conclusions and proof this to be the coincidence it has to be. She is looking for something ironclad. Somewhere between eye colour and a chronological list of known residencies it lists that Louis W. Tomlinson was born on the 24.12.1991. Harry stops reading, doesn’t dare to go on and skims the rest of the page. She dreads what she knows is coming. Most likely, in all probability. There are some blacked out words and sentences, and then something which is pretty ironclad, but not what she had been looking for at all. There’s a second name: “Charlotte Tomlinson”

***

Harry keeps her weapons in the reading room upstairs. 

Right now she is standing in the doorway to said reading room, trying to pull herself together. Or not. She’s not really sure.

No, she is definitely trying to pull herself together.

Harry kills people for a living. It’s what she does. A lot of them have done bad things, but Harry has learned not to look into her targets long before she ever got close to killing anyone in her second life, because no one is entirely good, but most people don’t deserve to die either when you look long enough. It’s basic really, contract killer 101. Don’t get emotionally involved. She’s good at it as well. Excellent.

Usually.

Harry is definitely good at this. It’s what she does.

***

Distance. 

Harry had thought that distance would make it easier. Not that it should be hard. She had just decided to go for distance this time. That’s how she ended up a few feet into the forest with a crossbow. Jeff would probably laugh at her if he could see her right now. Or ask her what the fuck she is doing. Tell her to get her swords, or just waltz in there barehanded and work her magic. Anything close combat. Jeff is neither here, nor a professional, versatile killing machine though.

She is watching the entrance to the Tomlinson’s house through the crosshairs. She’s breathing in, breathing out. She holds her breath.

She doesn’t think about why someone wants Louis and Lottie dead. Why someone wants them dead bad enough to hire one of the best contract killers there are. And severely overpay - or tip, perhaps - said contract killer. She’s been breathing normally again. 

Harry tires again. She focuses, targets a window this time. There are thick curtains on both of the windows that face the front. Harry has time.

In, out. Hold. Harry can hold her breath for a long time.

If there’s anything she is good at it is following orders. And killing. 

 

***

Harry packs up and goes back to her house over a detour through the forest as not to be seen. To change tactic and get a pair of swords, or to buy time she doesn’t know.

She locks the door - it had taken her some time to decide on a method of killing, so there are weapons strewn all over the two floors of the house now. That means making sure the door is definitely locked. That also means that it doesn’t matter when Harry dumps the crossbow next to the front door upon entering and goes to get herself a glass of water from the kitchen. She ends up sharing it with her Christmas star, too churning to finish it. 

The file is in the reading room, closed and under a stash of boxes. She’d taken it with her earlier. Harry decides to look through it again, and she feels, she knows she is already in too deep. Reading the file another time feels like burying herself even deeper in the hole she’s already struggling to climb out of. Sort of. 

It is not her usual case. Louis and Lottie are not influential, or dangerous. 

She reads it, not only looks through it, actually reads it, and it reveals what she already knows. What she guesses from the blackened words is that Louis and Lottie had more siblings at some point. There are in fact the remnants of a figure that looks an awful lot like a family tree somewhere in the back of the file. She doesn’t try to find out why. Harry really doesn’t want to know why any of her victims are wanted dead. She is just trying to make sense of the situation. 

Two sisters, the only people left of a group assassination job. All their other sibling dead already. Missing pages. All that. It’s like a sudoku. Harry is personally more of a crossword puzzle kind of person.

Harry is not asking why someone wants to kill the Tomlinsons. Not essentially. She is asking who the other people in the file are, where the connection is - she is guessing family, but that can’t be all, can it - and why they handed her a half-finished case without half the information, why the amount of money. That is what Harry is trying to make sense of. Not why Louis and Lottie deserve to die. 

There’s a difference.

Harry is not sure where the line actually is drawn, but there is one. 

She should meditate about this. Get herself back in order. Back into top form. Quiet her thoughts, and become centered. Become professional, because that’s what she is. So she does just that.

***

The meditation is not working. Not the way it is supposed to be working. 

Harry’s questions quiet down a bit, but not quite. It’s like the questions come from deeper within Harry than she had initially thought. The qualms come and go again, fading out a little eventually, but instead what she ends up envisioning is her neighbour’s house. The image keeps coming back. At the slightest accumulation of green mist at the corner of her vision, Harry is on her feet.

They are in the middle of a forest next to a see. Mist happens. There’s a lot of green surrounding them, sometimes the water in the lake almost looks a dirty brownish green, but what Harry saw was bilious green mist. And it was sneaking up on her field of vision, which means it will be sneaking up what she had been seeing pretty soon. Potentially already is, as she is storming down the stairs collecting throwing stars and knives. She doesn’t have time to look for two, or even just one of her swords. Which...obviously. 

It’s a bit unfair. Harry is running, sprinting over. She jumps over her fence (and the decorative spiral of stones in her garden). She is over at the Tomlinsons in a matter of seconds. The mist, just as she had been expecting is starting to creep out of the forest. And it’s not fair. She doesn’t know what to do. She didn’t have enough time to figure it out, figure anything of it out. That’s a new thing. She hasn’t made a decision yet, or has she? Harry doesn’t know.

Out of the venomous mist form three dark figures. Men with long swords in dark clothes. And Harry does what she knows. 

She has minimal weapons and the slight advantage of having been to the house before. She sneaks up on the men sneaking up on the Tomlinson's house. Maybe it’s the residue of the mist in the air or just the knowledge of who they are, but the closer she gets she starts feeling sick. Maybe it equates to the same thing.

There’s a rake leaning against the back of the house, which won’t be helpful at all in this situation. That’s about the only thing she can see. Harry is trying to look for things to use. Spade, shovel, hedge shears, anything, but no. She doesn’t have any more time. She has to step in. Right now. The danger Louis and Lottie are in is getting more imminent with the second. 

She focuses, centers herself. Tries to make the world slow down around her. 

Harry climbs onto the roof and towards the front of the house, where one of the men is picking the lock of the front door. He is a little distracted, so Harry jumps down onto one of the other men’s shoulders, knife in hand aiming for his throat. 

She grazes skin. The man is too fast shaking her off. She is not fighting her usual regular people here. The next thing she knows they are all tumbling into the house. It takes less than a second probably, a mere few instants for Lottie to appear out of nowhere followed by Louis.

“Run,” Harry screams. 

She tries to get the men’s attention on her. Tries to keep the attention of all three on her and she thinks she is succeeding. They seem surprised. It’s not very effective combat wise what she is doing. She is fighting, but instead of trying to separate one hard target from the others, she is trying to buy the Tomlinsons time. It earns her a few punches she can’t block, and thankfully only a few superficial cuts. Two of them don’t have their swords anymore. The blades were almost sharpened too fine, making it hard to cut very deep. More of a stabbing weapon, Harry would guess. Or a showing off kind of weapon.

Harry can feel blood starting to run down her nostrils and she focuses on slowing the world down around her again. 

One of the men kicks her while she is busy provoking the other two and trying to fetch one of the men’s swords from the ground. She ends up at the other end of the room, right up against the wall in the corner next to the Christmas tree that still stands. It shakes and a few baubles fall to the ground. Getting back on her feet is instinct. So is running back to the men who are now approaching Louis and Lottie.

Louis and Lottie who haven’t run yet. They are still there standing pretty much exactly where they had before, holding a gun - Louis - and something that looks like a metal stick - Lottie. And they are arguing for god’s sake. Harry is gobsmacked. She is running full speed, and slows down to normal human speed for a second there. What is wrong with them.

“Run for god's sake,” Harry yells desperately, which was a mistake. She’d been running towards them, could have easily used a dash of the element of surprise. Not anymore. “Or hide.”

Louis points her gun at Harry: “It’s too late to run.” Then she shoots one of the men in the head three times in fast succession with deafening sounds. She’s a bit shaky, didn’t stand ideally to counteract the blowback, but her face remains fierce through all of it like it’s sculpted from stone. Her arm is starting to tremble.

Who the fuck is Louis Tomlinson. 

The man dissolves into green ash that scatters on the floor. The other men seem unphased by the death of their partner, which doesn’t surprise Harry. Seems like no one is surprised, really. It only seems to spur them on a bit. Harry grabs one of them by the arm and shoulder and throws him as far away from Louis and Lottie as possible, which means against the front door that unhinges and cracks. She turns, kicking the second one right after in the motion.

Harry ushers Louis and Lottie towards the back of the house. She manages to lead them into the bathroom, which is about the furthest away from the front door and the dangerous men as they can get. If they refuse to run they’ll have to stay here. Maybe that is even better, to not drag this fight out into the woods.

Who the fuck are these people? How did the worst of all people - and not-people combined - there are find them, and decide they want them dead? Harry is saving them. And that’s her decision spelled out, right here. Harry is trying to save her targets.

“Stay,” she says in a hurry “just...stay.”

They don’t cooperate the way she had wished for. She tries to close the door, but they won’t let her. 

“I’ll fight,” Lottie says to Harry, foot in the door.

Harry doesn’t get the time to answer; Her targets are almost fighting each other at this point. They are not helping Harry save them. Louis and Lottie. Louis still holding her gun is trying to pry the metal rod out of Lottie’s hands. All while Harry is throwing a chair followed by two throwing stars at one of the attackers stalling him momentarily, and wounding his shoulder and his neck.

“The fuck you’re going to fight,” Louis spits. “You’re a child, still!”

“Shut it.” Lottie tries to push past Louis. When Louis won’t let her Lottie shoots her a venomous look, almost growling.

This is so not working. Harry is growing impatient. She doesn’t usually keep people alive during these kinds of things, especially if they are sabotaging her mission. This is throwing her out of kilter. “Just, stay in here,” she says as calmly as possible, looking at Louis as intently as possible. 

“As if that’s ever worked,” Louis says.

“Keep your sister safe then.”

Lottie snorts.

It’s like they want to die.

***

All three of the men are dead, heaps of dry dust among the mess of the living room. Harry’s heart is hammering in her head and her chest, down to the tips of her fingers and she is kind of just...staring for a moment or two.

“I just want - just for once, for something to fucking work,” Louis is muttering behind her. She is almost running around the house, ordering Lottie around, telling her to fetch things. Fast. There’s no resistance from Lottie this time. 

“What are you doing?”

Louis stops in her trail and turns towards Harry. She looks at her contemplatively, opens her mouth, then closes it again. She takes a breath and - letting it out - says: “Running.” She turns away and she almost does, run that is. She walks around the house frantically grabbing things, putting them back down and tapping her fingers on the nearest surface.

Harry wonders if they are suffering from shock. This seems like a very shocking situation for a normal everyday person. She needs her phone. She needs to call Jeff. “Where?” She asks instead.

“Good question Harry, but that has to stay secret. Top clearance information, to avoid, or at least prolong anything like this happening again. Important to keep that secret. Vital, you might say so.”

“She’s got no idea,” Lottie says. She looks sad. Slumped.

Louis doesn’t answer.

“Promise me - don’t run yet. Promise me you’ll stay. I’ve just got get my cell and call Jeff,” Harry almost begs. A part of her doesn’t want to leave them alone now. Is afraid they’ll be gone in a blink. Harry is too scared. She needs to protect them. “I’ll be back really shortly, ok?”

She doesn’t get the answer she had hoped for.

“Jeff’ll help,” She tries.

“It’s okay,” Louis says.

Harry’s mouth hangs open. “It’s what?”

“I don’t think there’s much this Jeff person could do for us.” Louis is starting to pace again. She is grabbing a jacket, and no. No, no, no. Louis Tomlinson is not just walking away from this. That can’t just happen. Harry had decided to help her. She wants so badly to keep her safe. She can’t just up and leave. Technically she can of course, but Harry doesn’t think she could deal with that.

Louis doesn’t leave.

She just stands where the front door once was, leaned against the wooden doorframe and looks at Harry. Harry thinks that people in shock need blankets and hot beverages. And pats on their shoulder.

“Who’s Jeff?” Lottie asks.

“He’s gonna, he can take us somewhere. Arrange for something.”

“So you’re saying he can actually help us?” Louis asks quietly but sternly. She looks up to Harry through her eyelashes.

“Yes.”

“Thank you.” Is all Louis says.

***

Jeff is already there. 

Harry doesn’t even get as far as her house before Jeff is stumbling towards her through her garden, and over the rocky beach. That was fast. He does look out of breath.

“You know you’ve really let your garden go, it’s a mess,“ Jeff says coming to a halt in front of her. He is looking at her with wide brown eyes. Then on a more serious note: “Are you ok?”

“I’ve been worse.”

Jeff keeps looking at her. Stares at her silently for a long moment. He doesn’t look particularly amused. At least Harry can still read and understand Jeff. “You’ve been dead.” A pause. “Are you alright?”

Harry nods. “I actually need you.”

“Later. What happened? The brief, quick memo version please?”

“It’s complicated,” Harry says with a sigh and she almost laughs. Almost. She shrugs off Jeff’s hand when he tries to grab her and drag her back towards her house where he came from. “I need you to get us out of here. Somewhere safe.”

“That can be arranged. I’ll get you out of here right now.”

“No, us. Lottie, and Louis, and me.”

At that Jeff’s urgency softens for an instance and he looks confused. “They survived?”

“Mhm,” Harry nods again and starts walking back to the Tomlinson’s house, forcing Jeff to follow her. She prays they are still there. She doesn’t think they aren’t. “I saved them. That’s your brief memo version of what happened. And now we have to get the fuck away from here.”

 

“That’s - yeah, that’s a good idea. But they’re not coming, Harry. Let me get you out of here.”

 

“What? No, not without them.”

 

“Have you lost your mind? They - you know that it’s not over. You know that very well Harry, I mean…- they’re a ginormous risk. You might as well just fucking wait out here and drown all your weapons in the lake while you're at it. How’s that sound?” Jeff is screaming at this point.

“I’ll make an illuminated sign with glitter on it telling them I’m waiting. I’m not leaving them alone.”

 

“Fuck,” Jeff sighs messing up his already messy hair even more with both his hands. He huffs. He nods and shakes his head. “Please, Harry.”

“Jeff.” 

“When have you become fucking suicidal.”

“Good,” Harry says. Maybe he is not too far off. Maybe Harry is going mental. Whatever. “Let’s go.”

***

Apparently, Jeff is really bad at being nice. You’d think it’s part of his job to at least pretend, but no. There’s no pretending today. They are currently in Jeff’s car, driving to a very secret location that Harry suspects is either Jeff’s place or the place of a friend of Jeff's.

“We’re on the run,” Jeff says over his shoulder from the driver's seat. Louis, Lottie, and Harry are squished together in the backseat of the admittedly not too small range rover because the windows in the back are tinted. And they are on the run. “Whoever you think you are, forget about that. You’re not that person anymore. That includes any kind of relationships outside of this car, anything.”

“I need to wee,” Louis whines. “When’s the next toilet break? I really need a loo.”

“Not now,” Jeff says angrily “I’ll need your phones, plus anything that can be traced per GPS, things like that. Do you two have social media?”

“No, but what I have is a full bladder,” Louis says.

“I have Twitter.” Lottie says.

Louis’ head snaps towards her sister, who is sitting on the middle part, that isn’t an actual seat. 

“What?” Lottie says, “It’s all private, and I’m not using my real name or location, or anything.”

“Excellent.” Jeff says holding an open hand out towards the back of the car.

***  
Jeff is going at least twice the speed limit over crooked dirt roads, that eventually lead them to actual streets that in turn lead them to a small town. They stop in front of a house, and Harry, Louis, and Lottie are not allowed to leave the vehicle. Harry sees Jeff go into an alley, come out a few minutes later and disappear into the gray building they parked next to. The atmosphere in the car is weird.

“So...Jeff,” Louis asks. Or states. She says it, basically.

“He’s good at this,” Harry answers. Jeff usually finds her places to stay. What they are doing right now is almost the same thing, so.

“Aha,” Louis answers and turns to look outside through the tinted window. 

Jeff returns and they start driving again. He doesn’t explain anything. They drive through a forest and past some fields into a more rural area. They stop close to a lake, where Jeff once again leaves them in the car with instructions to not leave the vehicle if possible. Louis can go pee behind a tree or something if she wants. Louis just huffs and says she’ll piss against his tires. 

Louis doesn’t pee on any part of Jeff’s car. She doesn’t pee at all, just sits there and waits, drawing patterns on the glass of the window.

Jeff comes back with a (faded) buttercup yellow Prius that looks like it barely passed its last two MOTs or so. They change into that car, and while Jeff is busy sinking his range rover into the lake, Lottie snitches the passenger seat, because obviously, she has rightfully earned it by sitting on the middle piece up until here.

***

It’s harder breaking the speed limit in a Prius and Jeff doesn’t seem as intent on it anymore. They still use side roads, driving through towns, and standing for hours at countless red lights it seems. They also stop at a petrol station to get drinks and snacks, and at a dodgy looking chips shop on the outskirts of a town. They don’t talk much. It’s oddly calm, them driving.

There’s an underlying anxiety, more than usual, Harry is sure, because of the constant danger. There’s tension like a quiet thing that is just there all the time, threatening to eat away at you. A tenseness, or disquiet. But for now, it’s quite peaceful if you disregard the bigger picture. Jeff is sipping on a sugary energy drink every few minutes, while the rest of them are yawning and starting to doze off, even though Harry feels like Louis is really trying not to.

“Where are we going?” Lottie asks, in a soft voice.

“Wales.” Jeff says.

“Anywhere specific?”

“Yes.”

Lottie gives up after that. 

Louis soon gives up, too.

Harry, well Harry doesn’t sleep, does she. She leans her head against the cold window, which isn’t comfortable, but that’s okay, and shifts in her seat. She watches the sky turn pitch black. Streetlamps flying by whenever they pass through a town. The heating is purring away, air uncomfortably dry. Louis is snoring softly beside her, and Harry closes her eyes. She pretends to sleep, tries to quieten her mind, shut it down.

The ambient noise morphs into one. It rears, a dirty buzzing that itches its way under Harry’s skin. A low omnipresence in her life that flows into her awareness.

***

They arrive at a pub. 

All of Harry feels uncomfortable and stiff and she tries to do some subtle yoga stretches next to the car. As much as her hips want her to do a proper routine right there on the cold, hard, and pretty dirty pavement if she has to, she can’t just do that. They are trying not to attract attention.

They all look not so gently rumpled, but Jeff looks worst off. Dark circles under his eyes, the same casual suit he had been wearing when he first brought Harry her job file - god that seems so long ago now - is rumpled and has a vaguely yellow stain on his chest. It doesn’t look very comfortable either. Harry decides to pat him on the back when he takes her aside.

“You’re going to lead from here on,” Jeff says. He is talking in a hushed voice. Louis and Lottie are leaning against the back of the car a few paces away.

Harry pats him on the shoulder once. Jeff’s eyebrows furrow and Harry lowers her hand again.

“Where am I leading us. This is not your idea of a hideaway, is it.”

“Into the pub,” Jeff whispers. A yawn. “You’re going to go in first, that’s our strategy. Our game plan.”

“Okay.”

“The formation is as follows: “ Jeff brings up one hand and starts to count on it. “You, those two, and then me. It...this is your territory. Finding this location, for me, has been hard enough. Now...we’re at a crossroad right here-”

“I don’t see a crossroad. It’s just a regular street. With a bit of a bend maybe- “

 

“No, no, no. Harry. No, listen. What I mean is, this is a figurative crossroad. Your last chance. Like, a metaphor. Are you sure, and I mean absolutely sure, that you want to stay with them? Because you could- “

“It’s a one-way street, Jeff.”

Jeff sighs, then nods. “Okay,” he mutters. “Your damn decision.“


	2. intermission

In a conference room in another remote location, probably in the Alps, Simon Cowell is sitting at one end of a long glass table. Even the table legs are made of glass. Simon’s white button up is almost buttoned up all the way only the little top button open, not showing any of his chest hair for once. Things are serious. 

Most of the other people in the room, all dressed in dark gray and blue suits are sitting at the other side of the shiny glass table. One brave person is standing somewhere in the middle. He is facing Simon.

“It saddens me” Simon speaks up in a disapproving tone and with a frown on his face. He makes a pause not unlike in the Next Top Model franchise when they hand out the photos to all the aspiring models who came through to the next round, or the Bachelor or Bachelorette show while handing out the last rose. His face is cold and emotionless. “We want Harry Styles dead.” Another pause as he folds his hands on the table. “We don’t actually, but we want her on our side and she won’t do it, and she’s standing in our way gentleman because we also want the Treasure. So we want her dead. Maybe she’ll come back to life again or we can bring her back and brainwash her or something, but for now...we want Harry Styles dead. And the treasure secured. On our side. It is the top priority.”

“You have failed Dan,” someone yells from the back.

“No,” Dan says. “I haven’t.”

The man from the back stands up from his chair. He is younger than the other people in the room. His eyes are fixed on his phone, tapping and scrolling down it with one thumb as he strolls towards Dan.

“Hah, don’t be delusional Xander. I have sent my men. They are out to bring us the Treasure and kill Styles in the process. A source close to -”

“Your men,” Xander interrupts with a smirk playing around his mouth as he holds out his phone for Dan to see “are dead. They failed. You failed, Dan.” 

On the phone twitter is opened showing a tweet by @charlottetommo. It reads: “really getting tired of all the shit assasination attempts. some people should know when to just give up lol” It was posted a few hours ago.

Dan squints at the phone. Then his jaw drops and he doesn’t say anything for a moment. “This isn't real. @charlottetommo could be anyone! It's not -”

“Dan,” Simon interrupts, “When did you last have contact with your men? Are they dead?”

“Again,” Xander says more quietly with a raise of his eyebrows.

Dan just grits his teeth together and glares at Xander who smiles back delightedly.

Although they are all in this together on the dark side and have the same goal, there has always been rivalry between people. Just because they’re on the same team doesn’t mean there aren’t winners and loser. Dan’s defeat was but a chance for Xander to prove his superiority and make his dad proud, as well as achieve world domination once the dark side has won. He takes another few steps until he is standing in front of Simon.

“Let me,” Xander proposes turning his focus to Simon Cowell, who has been following this exchange with minimal facial expressions, his face his usual unreadable mask of discontent. “I’ll do it. My men, and me of course, we won’t be defeated by one woman. Or Ghost, or whatever. I’ll kill her Simon, and I’ll get you the Treasure.”


	3. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here are some words

They spend most of the day waiting, just standing around the car. It’s not very inconspicuous. Jeff takes a nap sprawled across the back seats, as much as a grown man can sprawl in the limited space of the backseat of a small car.

Jeff makes Harry go in first like they discussed. Harry has a vague idea who they are going to meet here, and an inkling that it might not be completely comfortable.

The pub had looked old and dark from the outside, even with the gentle morning sun doing its best to illuminate it. It’s even worse on the inside. The interior is probably solely responsible for cutting down at least two mahogany trees, and of course all the smaller, less valuable trees that stood around them in the tropical rainforest.

Around three corners, past the bar, in a half-secluded backroom, stands - unmistakable in jeans and a casual salmon-coloured tunic - James Corden. He is leaning against a pool table, cue held like a walking cane in his right hand. He is smirking. Harry kind of expected something - someone like this. She only got the ranks completely wrong, apparently.

“Well, well, well,” Corden says as they approach. “I see, “ he says looking from Harry to Louis and Lottie at her left and Jeff standing a step behind her on her right. “Where you have gone. Not that I was completely clueless, Harold...you’ve converted to the Bad Side. Huh.”

“More like...neither, actually,” Harry replies. She feels ashamed and small standing in front of Corden.

Corden raises a single blond brown eyebrow. There’s a pause during which he does nothing but twist the stick in his hand back and forth between his fingers and look at Harry. It makes her uncomfortable, but she knows why they are here. Even more so now, that she knows who they came here to meet, and she decides to get it over with before the shame gets to swell up inside of her even more.

“We need help,” she says. Straight to the point and not entirely painless, but the plaster is off now and it’s up to Corden to heal the wound or rub salt into it. Or ignore it. He could just send them away again, couldn’t he.

“I know.”

 

Obviously.

Of course he would know, he’s James Corden. Harry explains the situation to him anyways. She tries not to leave anything important out. For the first time since it happened, she gets to say it out loud. She tells him about the three men from the Bad Side. She tells him what they were. Saying the words out loud. is incredibly relieving, and she almost feels a pinch of comforting familiarity creep it’s way in - an echo of a memory - as she tells him.

Corden listens and nods like he already knows. Maybe he does. Probably.

“I’ve got a place,” Corden finally says, “Abandoned house. Pretty off the radar. Probably as secret as you’ll get. It is but a temporary solution though, you know that. Do you trust your friend here to know what he’s doing?” He tilts his cue towards Jeff with the question, smirking condescendingly.

Jeff straightens up and puffs out his chest. He glares at Corden.

“I do, with my life.” Harry says.

Corden doesn’t quite laugh. It’s more of a quiet snort, intended to be heard.

“Thank you,” Harry says. She had expected this to go worse, way worse than this to be honest. In fact, she had never expected to ever see Corden again. That had been how she had lived her life up until a few minutes ago. “Really, thank you.”

“Was that all?” Corden asks. 

James Corden asking questions is really just a display of his power, Harry is convinced. Like Aristoteles in a way. It’s a showcasing of his greatness because he doesn’t have to ask them. When he does, it is only for the other people. It feels like he is always in control because he already knows. That’s why he asked.

“Yes,” Jeff is quick to answer and makes to turn around. 

Harry doesn’t move. “Actually...can I talk to you, like, can we talk in private. For a second?”

 

Jeff answers before Corden can, in the form of a sigh and a muttered complaint. Corden doesn’t look happy either, and maybe he is still holding a grudge. Maybe Harry should have just left it at ‘Thank you’. 

“Sure, if your company doesn’t mind.”

The others leave them alone in the secluded pool room, and Harry steps closer to Corden. The room is painted blue, purple shining out from underneath it. It looks almost like a cartoon sky about to set. It’s relatively quiet. Maybe Harry is just blending out what is happening in the background though. She is nervous.

“So, a pub in Wales,” Harry starts. “Did they move the Angels round here then?”

“Oh, they don’t exist like that anymore, the Angels. Not that I’d be allowed to tell you” Corden laughs doing a dismissive hand gesture, “No, I’m here to beat people at pool and rid them of their money. That’s what I do… mostly poker, sometimes pool or darts. The odd pop quiz just for fun when I’m feeling like it. Way less risky than casinos that way. It pays quite well, actually. The rest of my time I spend standing on cliffs and peering into the distance.”

“So...you’re, you scam people now? Like, a professional scammer?”

“Skill is never a scam. I see myself as more of a teacher, still. Yes, I exploit people's pompous egos, in a way, but I teach them a lesson in the process. That they are fallible. It’s a very precious lesson, Harold. And it’s not a fault.”

There is a pause.

Harry has the feeling that Corden might be talking about her. In his great-guru ways. Maybe hearing that being fallible isn’t a fault out of his mouth means something like ‘you are forgiven’. Or it could mean ‘even I do such things as fail, like remember that time I thought you were a person worthy of a second chance and plenty of my time. What a mistake that was’. 

“I’m sorry,” Harry says. She takes a deep breath, just to stall for time. “Genuinely sorry, I -”

“Was it intuition?” Corden asks.

No.

Absolutely not.

“That you didn’t kill these two. Had a hard time going against it?” He pushes himself off the pool table and changing his position for the first time in their entire conversation so he is completely facing Harry. He looks at her like he might genuinely not know the answer for once; with genuine interest and only a hint of a smile that is. There’s nothing haughty or powerful to it. He has to know.

Harry doesn’t know how to use or even perceive her intuition anymore.

“You know me, James. You know that I don’t do that anymore.”

“Oh, I’m well aware of what you’re doing young Harold. It’s not always about the action though, is it.”

Coming to James Corden, Jedi master and apparently ex-leader of an army of Angels that formerly had also included Harry. James Corden, who had brought Harry back from the dead, and whom Harry had kind of run from without an explanation a year and a half ago. Coming to him for help had been a bad idea. A very bad idea on Jeff’s part.

Corden lays a hand on Harry’s shoulder and leans in towards her: “I always knew you were a good one Harry, and I don’t mean good at your job. Or whatever you were doing at the time. I mean your soul, you’re being. You’re a good person, you just don’t realize that.” He pats her on the shoulder.

In her line of work being good at her job, which Harry knows for a fact that she is, and being a good person are mutually exclusive. Uncombinable, polar opposites. The most mutually exclusive there is.

Corden just smiles. And the smugness of knowing more than everyone else is right back there. Maybe Harry had only imagined it gone.

***

They take two trains and a bus to a small town, from where on they walk. Jeff promises to organize a car once they get there. Louis still complains.

The abandoned house Corden told them about really is very abandoned. It’s on a hill, and surrounded by trees, right next to an old graveyard where vines have grown over all the tombstones. There’s a pond in front of it that looks like it was part of a garden once. There are remains of a paint job on the house facade, chips of bleached blue, but mainly the facade is dark, weathered wood.

 

The door breaks open easily. Inside there is dust and dried up leaves, some branches. Soil and little stones. All in all, there’s a lot of dirt. It collects in corners and on the sides of the staircase in the hallway. 

“We’ll have to get the lock fixed first thing. I’ll do that,” Jeff says immediately after walking in. Louis is walking around the hallway, opening doors and peering into rooms, she is halfway up the stairs already, ignoring Jeff glaring at her when he continues “What you have to do now is change the way you look. You two.”

“Oh, and Harry not?” Louis turns around. “Why is it only us who have to change our appearance?” she asks with the played up attitude of a bratty four year old. She is looking at Jeff while she speaks but turns to Harry after as if she expects her to answer.

“I can...blend in,” Harry starts. She thought they had been past the ‘I’m not exactly, technically a human’ thing after the fight, but it is still weird talking about this, trying to explain herself.

“She can make herself invisible. You two can’t. Case in point, you’ll have to change your looks,” Jeff said.

“Oh, is that so? Invisible?” Louis is leaning against the railing of the staircase. It gave a little and she wobbled, but she is keeping the posture, perhaps with less weight on her hand. Right now you could think Jeff is invisible to her with how intently she is watching Harry.

“Not actually, I know how to make myself not be seen, when I want to. Avoid being observed. It makes me like...fade into my surroundings.” 

“Show me,” Louis demands. She keeps up the intent look.

“It’s not that easy, when-,” Harry stammers. This is turning out to be embarrassing, great. “It’s not that easy to go invisible when someone is already really focusing on you, it’s-.” Harry looks down at her feet. The floor is stone, squares framed in darker stone. There are dry leaves all over it.

“Show me,” Louis persists. “Try.” 

Harry looks up, and Louis is still looking at her so very intently, that Harry knows this can’t work. She won’t manage to go invisible like that. That doesn’t mean she won’t try. She focuses on her surroundings, still looking at Louis for a hint of her losing sight of Harry, the furrow of a brow, a few confused blinks, her eyes losing focus. Anything. Maybe she can make herself blur a little in front of Louis’ eyes, maybe if Louis blinks.

She concentrates on the room they are standing in. It’s not about perceiving it, not even about centering yourself. This is all about connecting to everything around you on a different level, to the point where you become part of your surroundings. It’s easier at night. That’s when she is mostly used to doing it.

Louis doesn’t stop staring at her. She doesn’t even waver. And it makes Harry try harder. The wood and what is left of the wallpaper peeling from the walls and the stone she is standing on. 

“Wow,” Lottie breaths.

Harry is so surprised she almost loses her state, falls right out of it.

There’s a pause where Harry can feel Lottie looking in the vague direction of where Louis is still staring. Harry is staring back.

“Good enough,” Louis says. 

Just like that the tension in the room is cut and Harry takes a deep breath. Jeff declares that he has to go take care of things.

“If you don’t want a good room.” Lottie shrugs.

Harry doubts there are any good rooms in this house. 

Jeff breathes in and then out in a condescending manner. “Don’t worry about me,” he says, “Go...change something about your appearance.”

“Shut up, Jeff,” Harry says, “and get me a coat? I didn’t get to grab mine. Something long.”

Jeff leaves without another word. 

Harry, Louis and Lottie explore the house. The electricity works. Not every lamp does, but there’s a fridge and it seems to come to life when they plug it in. There’s a fireplace on both floors, one downstairs in the kitchen and another in one of the bedrooms on the second floor. Louis immediately claims it. The house also has heaters in almost every room, but they look a little dodgy. The ceilings are low and Harry is surprised how much more compact the house seems from the inside.

***

Jeff is gone doing important things a lot. He is hardly around actually, only stopping by to drop off food or attempt to install a new lock on the front door. He had given up after three hours of cursing at the door for not closing and had called a local locksmith. He kept babbling on about how he had inherited the place from a distant aunt, the whole time, which Harry personally thinks has never happened to anyone outside of fiction. He returns that evening, just to retreat to a room that is still free with two sandwiches and an orange. 

A window in the kitchen is shattered, shards of glass everywhere. The bare branch of a tree has grown through the window frame. Harry is looking through one of the two shopping bags full of food Jeff had left on the cleanest corner of the kitchen counter. Milk, all sorts of granola bars, trail mix, apples, bread, oranges.

Lottie walks into the kitchen. Her hair is white. The proper term is platinum blonde, Harry thinks, but really, it is white. It’s also shorter. She doesn’t look like she is trying to hide, but that’s not really the point. The point is to look different and buy them some time. After that Harry isn’t sure what their plan is yet.

“I like your hair,” Harry says grabbing an apple from the grocery bag and heading to the sink. She turns on the tab and waits for the stream of water to clear. 

“Thanks,” Lottie says, “shame you can still see me though. Do you think the 5 centimetres I took off will confuse them?” She laughs and starts looking through the cabinets.

The water doesn’t smell quite as rusty now and it’s almost clear. Harry decides to wait another minute or two.

“Were you planning on preparing a proper meal?”, Lottie asks upper body lost in a kitchen cabinet next to the sink. Her voice echoes in the confined space. Harry makes a noncommittal sound looking at her apple. She could make a fruit salad probably.

“Yes!” Lottie exclaims triumphantly. She comes back from the cabinet and stands up, dust and cobwebs hanging from and sticking to her clothes. She has a wooden brush in one hand. “Can’t live here with broken glass lying around everywhere, can we.” She smiles at Harry and starts brushing the shards from the countertop onto the floor.

“I’ll make like, a small thing if you like something?” Harry offers. She looks at her apple again. That was supposed to be her whole meal for now. Apples. Probably a lot of them. “I’d planned mostly...fruit. And, we have some bread maybe? It’s Jeff, so he definitely bought peanut butter. The one with tons of sugar in, if you like that. Do you want something?”

“Sure,” Lottie says.

Lottie gets Louis from her room and they end up eating right there in the kitchen, sitting on the counter. Louis points out multiple times that they have a dining table with chairs and all, just a room over, but she was the first one up on the counter, a carton of juice already in one hand, grabbing a tomato out of the plastic packaging with the other. 

“What are we saving up the cereal for?” Louis asks.

“Breakfast,” Harry answers, even though the question was directed mostly at Lottie. It seems Louis didn’t even hear her. Maybe she didn’t.

“Some people,” Lottie grins at Louis “you know, like to limit breakfast foods to once a day. In the morning.” 

“Bullshit,” Louis says.

***  
She takes a deep breath in, closing her eyes, and lets it out slowly through her mouth. Then another. Her focus shifts inwards on its own accord. 

It’s a watercoloured nightmare in dark grays and blues and black. At the core of it is black. It’s herself she is perceiving. Usually, that’s good, something she can work with. This feels like she’s suffocating in open space. Almost like she is drowning in a murky ocean this time, without the pressure of water pushing down on her. She makes herself breath.

The sound of someone knocking on a door pulls her back into her room.

Harry blinks at the door as it opens, stares into the distance right through Louis as she asks her something. Or tells her to do something. She probably asked a variation of what Harry is doing, and Harry should probably answer.

Harry blinks some more.

“I’m...doing yoga,” Harry slowly opens her eyes. It’s a sunny morning in December, but the air is cold, almost freezing. Louis is standing in the doorway of her room, leaning against the door frame. Harry decides to focus on her. Louis, and breathing.

“Yoga, aha,” Louis says. “Training your invisibility thing?”

“Almost,” Harry smiles at her. “This is...I’m doing more of a - a perception. -- This is really just mostly yoga, for focus and centering yourself. To slow down, you know.” She doesn’t say to slow down time. She also doesn’t mention that she has started talking about something entirely different from what she’d been doing. “I could show you.”

Louis raises her eyebrows: “Show me?”

Harry nods. She scoots over on her the ground, from the middle of her room to not quite in the middle of the room anymore. She corrects her position,straightening her back and gestures for Louis to sit down in front of her. Then she closes her eyes and places both hands on her thighs.

She hears the floorboards creak ad Louis walks over and sits down on the floor in front of Harry.

“Aren’t you supposed to do that on like, a soft yoga mat?”

“Didn’t get a chance to grab mine,” Harry reminds her. She smiles. She actually misses her yoga mat. Sure, Jeff could get her a new one, but it wouldn’t be the same. “It can be good though. The hard floor, it can give you something to focus on. When your mind wanders. You know, besides your breath.”

Harry considers talking Louis through some form of guided meditation. “Ok,” she says. “Are you sitting comfortably? Close your eyes. And take a deep breath. Are your eyes closed?”

Louis hums affirmingly, and Harry can hear her breathing. She is tempted to just listen to Louis sitting there, but she doesn’t want to go back into any kind of meditative state. Not if she can’t control it, so she stays present.

“Try to breathe into your lower belly, breathe deeply.”

Another affirmative sound from Louis. “Am I invisible yet?”

 

“I wouldn’t know. My eyes are closed,” Harry says. Her eyes are actually closed, but she opens them now. She looks at Louis and Harry hadn't expected her to sit there eyes closed and breathing. She hadn’t expected her to actually go along with it. “Try not to think.”

Harry watches. She tells Louis to focus on the sound of her breath and watches he relax. Her breaths evening out and Louis rolling her shoulders. After her while her face starts to relax as well. 

Harry forgets to say anything for a while and Louis peeks her eyes open. When she notices Harry looking back at her she opens them all the way and points a finger at Harry that almost touches her nose. “You had your eyes open!” she accuses Harry.

“You opened your eyes.” 

“You cheated!” Louis says delightedly. Hr eyes are sparkly and alive and he smile is so so big.

“I was instructing you.”

 

“You totally cheated.”

“I didn’t!” Harry lies down on the ground and looks up at Louis. It’s uncomfortable and she likes it. Louis is beautiful.

“This is not how you do your invisibility thing is it? Breathing exercises.”

“No,” Harry says shaking her head, “It’s not.” She lies there, looking up at Louis and it took her this long to notice, or to realize. “You didn’t change,” she says gesturing to Louis head. She still has the same light brown pixie cut with her fringe almost on the brink of falling into her eyes. Those eyes are just as blue as always. Harry can’t spot a single thing that’s different about her. “Like Lottie, you didn't do your invisibility thing.”

“It’s all a bit pointless, isn’t it,” Louis says her smile turning wry. “They’re going to find us.”

Oh. 

Harry wants to go back to a few seconds ago and tell herself to just shut up. She wants to go back to smiling and being relaxed.

 

***

It’s not like Harry doesn’t wonder why someone - why the worst people there basically are on this planet, the official Bad guys - wants Louis and Lottie dead. She does. The question keeps nagging at her, but Harry doesn’t want to ask and bring it up. It’s just there, this unanswered question hanging around in the air at all times. 

***

“I want to show you something,” Louis says after dinner the next day. She is already walking outside, not waiting for Harry to answer. She has a flashlight in one hand, one of those really bright ones that Jeff got each of them because of the unreliable electricity in the house.

Harry follows her.

They walk across the graveyard which is directly next to the house. It looks like the low wall around it used to serves as a fence for some of the front yard of the house. 

Harry has not left the house much since they arrived here. She has been practicing her powers, mostly focusing on working out and blending in and talking to Jeff when he is there - usually in the evenings. The rest of her time she has been spending with Louis and Lottie. They usually prepare food, eat food, talk, try to make a fire or complain about how cold it is, and that there is no warmth isolation in this house whatsoever. It is a pretty considerable amount of her time. She didn’t know Louis had left the house. There’s not much out there.

It is way past six, which means the sun has already set and it is practically nighttime. There are no discernible paths on the graveyard, everything overgrown with vines and dead grass. There is also the occasional tree that was probably being regularly cut to look aesthetically pleasing at some point in history. There are fewer pine trees in this forest. More skeletons of leaf trees with a few red and brown, crinkled up, dry leaves still hanging from them. It makes the forest look a lot less green and a lot more dreary. Almost dark purple in the day. Right now everything except for the cone illuminated by Louis’ flashlight is just shades of dark.

Louis keeps looking around as they go, wagging her flashlight around in all directions. They walk along the wall surrounding the graveyard until Louis stops in front of a large barren tree with low hanging branches just outisde the graveyard. She steps over the wall, looks at the tree, then looks at Harry, and then at the tree again. Harry strains to see, but she thinks Louis is smiling at the tree. The tree looks like it is leaning forwards, over the little wall almost like it is reaching out for the old tombstones.

“Here, hold,” Louis says throwing her flashlight in Harry’s direction, “And shine at the trunk, will you.”

“Are you going to...climb a tree?”

“Yes, we are, “ Louis says and Harry can hear the smile now. “We are going to climb this tree, both of us. I’ve just decided that. It was one of my favourite things to do as a child, so we’re gonna do that now. ‘S always fun.”

“That’s the - thing, you wanted to show me?” Harry is a bit stunned. She was at least half joking when she had asked Louis whether she was planning on climbing a tree in what might as well be the middle of the night, in the middle of winter as well, with her. And in the middle of a getaway, or hideaway, or whatever. With Harry.

“Yes,” Louis says,“Are you telling me that Miss I do five hours of yoga a day isn’t in shape enough to climb a medium sized tree? Or is it that you’re boring?” 

It looks like a pretty big, old tree to Harry. 

They climb the tree. Louis goes first, telling Harry to point the flashlight places she can’t possibly reach from her position on the ground, as she climbs. Harry could levitate off the ground and up into the tree. She thinks about it, but it would probably take the fun out of climbing trees to forgo that step, so she shines the flashlight from the ground until Louis has reached a branch she likes, throws it up to her - which takes a few tries - and climbs up after her.

The bark is moist, or maybe it’s just really cold. Harry’s feet slip and lose their grip a few times, but she manages without levitating once, the real, human way.

Louis chose a broad branch not too far from the ground. They are sitting facing each other one leg on either side of the branch. Harry sits with her back to the trunk of the tree since Louis had climbed up first. Louis is supporting herself with her hands on the branch in front of her, flashlight between them casting a little bit of light. She is smirking at Harry.

“Well…” Harry says. Leaning against the trunk is not an option. It isn’t chair shaped or comfortable at all. She hasn’t found a way to sit yet that isn’t horrible. “This is - incredibly uncomfortable.”

Louis laughs.

She turns off the flashlight and the darkness is suddenly everywhere. “Look at the sky,” she whispers.

It’s a lot. There are a lot of stars and it’s so beautiful it’s almost too much, unreal. And then there is the moon, a bright crescent in the middle of it all. Harry looks around them, cranes her neck to try and see all of it, every single star.

“Do you know any constellations?” Louis asks.

“No,” Harry answers. She shakes her head no.

“I only know like, the Plough I think? Is that what it’s called?”

“I think it is.”

“I wish I knew more.” 

They sit in silence for a while. It’s really nice.

“Thank you for showing me,” Harry says into the night, “it’s beautiful.” It’s very far away and captivating and beautiful. It should make her feel tiny compared to all of the stars, all that’s out there, but it doesn’t. “I almost killed someone in my first life,” she admits in one breath, so quickly that in the silence after, it’s like maybe it didn’t even happen. “One of the last things I did actually. She survived, as far as I know.”  
For some reason Harry is so nervous she almost wants to laugh. She’s nervous about how Louis is going to react. Not as much to the fact that Harry mentioned a first life, implying the one Harry is living right now is not her first - maybe Louis didn’t even hear, or process that part. She is worried that Louis will be disgusted, or terrified because Harry has always been horrible. She’d been a horrible human being, even when she had still been a proper one.

“What was that like?” Louis asks.

Harry doesn’t know. She’s so ashamed of everything. “Scary,” she finally says. It’s incredibly hard saying any of this out loud. Harry has to close her eyes and force the words out one by one. “I was very angry and alone and. It was scary.”

Louis doesn’t say anything.

“Sorry,” Harry says.

“You’ve seen me shoot a guy, Harry.”

“I have,” Harry says. There’s some more quiet. “Still.”

Louis doesn’t say anything. They breathe and look up at the sky. Clouds pass by slowly in front of the moon. The entire world is asleep except for them. It’s cold. 

“Let’s maybe, not think about that for a while,” Louis says. “How everything is horrible and we are stuck in the middle of nowhere, just waiting for them to find us and try to kill us, again. Because they will, no matter where we hide. How we might as well light the house on fire because they will find us anyway. Let’s not think about that. Just for a bit.”

Harry bites her lip. She smiles and she nods. “Like a lighthouse, in the middle of the forest,” she says. Except it doesn’t really make sense, does it. 

“Like a lighthouse,” Louis says “Just lead ‘em right here, get it over with.” There’s a pause. “I want to be happy though.”

Harry takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she says. It slips from her mouth. Louis had seemed considerably happy given their circumstances. Louis, and Lottie both.

“For exposing the fundamental flaws in my plan to commit arson?”

“For not being able to protect you enough, that you can be happy. -- I’m sorry that I can’t make you happy,” Harry says. She’s mostly speaking without thinking, and she’s pretty sure it’s coming out mostly right.

“Who made it your job to make me happy? Or to protect me?” Louis asks.

“I - don’t know,” Harry stammers. She fiddles with her fingers. Talking is suddenly a lot harder again, maybe she should just stop, and not talk. “I just want to, I guess.” She whispers.

“Well, it isn’t,” Louis says with an air of finality that confuses Harry. 

She doesn’t say anything. She likes that Louis doesn’t say anything either. They sit in silence for a while and Harry relaxes a bit, peeling some of the bark off the branch they are sitting on. “Let’s not think about it, maybe,” she says. She can’t really see Louis’ face when she looks at her, just the outline of her head.

Louis kisses Harry. She leans over and puts her lips on Harry’s for a good few seconds. They’re cold from the air around them. Everything is cold.

Louis pulls back so she’s not as in Harry’s personal space anymore, but not completely. “Sorry,” she says smiling. From this close, Harry can actually see her facial expression, really see it. She is looking at Harry’s face very intently.

“Yeah,” Harry smiles, ”it was horrible.” It makes Louis giggle, which is amazing. 

“Disgusting.”

Louis scoots closer on the branch, her flashlight slips from her hands and falls to the ground. And then they kiss again. Harry brings a hand up to Louis’ shoulder, wrapping her legs a little tighter around the branch. This one is longer and brighter, and also a little bit more clumsy. Harry thinks it’s also warmer. 

“This is pretty good,” Louis says when they break off for a bit and Harry hums. They are breathing onto each others faces. ”Almost as good as arson.”

***

The next morning there’s a disturbance downstairs. It’s coming from the kitchen and Harry can hear Jeff yelling. There’s the sound of a bullet being shot and Harry’s whole world is tinted within a millisecond. It’s tinted and tarnished. The fake safety of their hideaway is shattered, officially over.

Harry runs downstairs as fast as she can, jumping down most of the steps on the stairs, to see not only Jeff but way too many people in the kitchen. It’s only a bunch of them, dressed in all black, but Jeff is alone, and Harry is too late. Jeff is the one holding a gun, and it looks like he shot one of them, but Harry is still too late. She arrives just in time to see it, but she can’t stop it. 

A knife slashes Jeff's throat and his body falls to the ground, blood splashing out of the wound. Harry is ready to cry. A lump is forming at the back of her throat and she takes a breath that is sure to become shaky at the very end or stutter when she lets it back out again and turn into a scream.

Except that’s not what happens. Jeff starts to fall, blood gushing, but he never hits the ground. Before he can his body dissolves into green dust right before Harry’s eyes and Harry wants to burn the motherfucking house down. Burn that particular pile of dirt, over and over and over again.

It overcomes her and she makes a mess of the place. She throws things and she thinks she does scream after all, she’s probably swearing. She throws the whole kitchen cabinet at someone, and the knifes and everything around her, all in super speed. A ladle hits and breaks one of the windows and she picks up things from the floor to throw some more. She doesn’t know whom she is aiming at, she’s just destroying. 

She shatters the kitchen in one big outburst of rage, and then she runs. Away. She grasps for rationality. Something, like her decision to protect the Tomlinsons, and that’s all she’s got to hang on to, isn’t it. It might not be enough, but it’s something. Harry tells herself over and over again, over the hurt and the rage and the fucking uncertainty, that Louis and Lotti need her. To fight for them, right now, because it makes sense, and it's a cause. She tells herself that they need her.

She finds them in Lottie's room, already climbing out of the window and tries so very hard to focus on them. She manages on a superficial level. She repeats it, makes it the loudest voice in her mind until they become her focal point.

***

They are somewhere in the damn forest, literally anywhere. Surrounded by trees and there is no end to them, or clearing, or anything else but trees and more trees in sight. Conifers and barren branches of leaf trees.

“Stop,” Harry shouts out. She comes to a halt. They’d been running, at a pace that is fast, but way too human for Harry and probably laughable for the people chasing after them. Trailing Louis and Lottie, when all she wants to do is explode is only making it worse. There’s too much energy inside of her, they might as well use it against their enemies.

“Chosen a place to fight then, have you?” Lottie says.

“It’s not like running is very effective,” Harry says. “Give me like, a knife or something. I don’t suppose you brought a sword.”

“We brought weapons.” Louis says. “Only the things Lottie had in her room really.” 

It’s not much is what that means. A dagger, and some other things Harry isn’t sure how Lottie got Jeff to entrust her with. She doesn’t think she even needs anything sharp right now, doesn’t really care, but she takes the dagger from Lottie anyway.

“Just stay behind me,” Harry mutters and in the next moment they’re already there. They arrive in a sort of V-shaped formation, strolling towards them almost casually, only faster, and even through the blind rage that keeps boiling up inside of her, Harry thinks they are fucked. Outnumbered in person count and skill and weapons. Just generally, fucked. She goes for offence as the best defence and runs into them. From then on all happens in flashes.

The first person, someone on the outer fringe of the V, she runs into as fast as she can ramming her dagger into their chest. She gets blocked on the first try and cuts through a forearm. She keeps on ramming the dagger tough, and she gets hurt some, sure but that’s just as well. She eventually strikes the chest, piercing the person's lungs. And then again, when there’s already someone else attacking her from behind.

As she rams her elbow into his throat she catches sight of Louis, who is still alive. Which is good. Impressive, and really good. That’s her thing, her focal point she is supposed to be focusing on. She breaks a neck and makes to run over to where Louis is biting her attacker and quickly turning a seemingly hopeless situation around. She hesitates a little with the hammer in her hands, which is her only mistake, before it hits her opponents skull and cracks it open.

She has seen Louis shoot a guy in the head, but she hasn't seen Louis fight before. Louis fights like a swan. From what Harry knows about Louis, she could have guessed the chaotic, almost frantic tendencies in her style. It’s still surprising, but not as surprising as Lottie.

Most of the battle is happening way too fast. Most people moving in superhuman speed. Harry is three steps from Louis when it hits her, when she notices. Louis is the only one moving slower than the rest. Lottie is moving as fast as everyone else and Harry stops, rooted to the spot. She has become one of the trees.

 

It’s all going to shit. It’s all going to fucking shit. Harry is failing, and more importantly, the people she’s been protecting are going to die because she’s failing, and she doesn’t think it’s entirely fair, but that’s just it. It doesn’t make sense. Lottie swerves way too quickly, manages to push the woman she is fighting onto the ground. Too easily.

That’s when out of the trees comes descending in the air James Corden in a familiar red-trimmed white tunic. James Corden, and an army of Angels close behind. Too many things are happening. Harry hasn’t figured out anything yet. Lottie, or James, or Jeff betraying her all that time. There isn’t much to figure out there though, is there. Someone attacks her and she throws them against a tree. Jeff had been bad all along. He had been lying. And Lottie and Corden - Harry doesn’t know.

Why is she not allowed a fucking rest?

James Corden and his Angels start doing their thing. And Harry just keeps standing in the middle of it all, staring. Staring at Lottie, clearly superhuman in some way, getting saved by two angels. There are questions and words, but they don’t formulate whole sentences, they just whir around her head.

Maybe it doesn’t have to make sense for her to come to a conclusion. She doesn’t have to understand to know, not necessarily, what betrayal feels like. It feels futile and helpless, and most of all drastic. 

It’s almost like dying all over again, standing there. Harry can feel death spreading inside of her. After years of being dead inside, she can feel the familiar nothingness reclaiming its rightful place as she slips into apathy. She hopes, to god, she is slipping into apathy. Please. Please, please. Please let that be happening. Please grant her this.

A woman is walking straight towards Harry. Harry catches it out of the corner of her eye, still staring vaguely at Lottie, but there’s no mistaking in the way the woman walks past people fighting, gaze intensely intent on Harry. Calm and oozing a calculated graze. Vermilion red lips and hair to match, that sways in the air just past her shoulder as she walks towards Harry. The perfect, artfully messy waves stay in place like she hasn’t been fighting, but then again, no one here is really human.

Out of all the things she could do, the woman kisses Harry.

It starts as a peck on the lips, but she doesn’t pull away. She keeps her lips pressed to Harry’s. There’s no rush behind it and Harry feels all the urgency slip out of her, her mouth relaxing and opening. There’s a hand on her neck and Harry keeps still. The woman deepens the kiss, Harry lets her, and now this is almost exactly like dying all over again. 

Harry’s hearing narrows in on the rush of blood through her veins and it’s almost like bleeding she thinks. There has got to be an open wound somewhere. There definitely are. Or is the blood not leaving her body, is it not the blood. How could it be, when it is all she can hear and feel. And she should probably fight. Fight someone, but she doesn’t. 

***

The clouds are slow dancing in the distance. They feel closer than ever against the blue, blue, vibrant sky. Like Harry could just reach out her hand and join them. Everything is so very three dimensional. But Harry is being called. Someone is calling for her and a real hand reaches out pulling her up.

Harry wakes up in a field.

“Finally,” Gemma says dragging her past elder bushes buzzing with life. High grass, that tickles the hollows of her knees. She doesn’t let go of Harry’s hand. Harry grabs it tighter, just because. There’s shimmering golden oat grass and Harry wants to card her hands through it - and she can smell lavender. She tears off a few leaves of grass with her free hand in passing, blows them into Gemma’s neck. They fall into her own face instead. Gemma turns around.

Gemma always wins. She’s older, which is unfair, but Harry tries harder. She tries and she knows she is not going to blink this time. She keeps her eyes open. Soon there’s going to be tears in her eyes, but she keeps them forced open. Gemma laughs and Harry joins her. Their laughter echoes.

She sees stars and planes, but never a single shooting star, and they wait for the stars to move. They will, eventually.

When she opens her eyes again there’s a whole sea of different flowers, all white surrounding them. White blossoms everywhere. In the distance the single flowers blur, powdered sugar, dusting the field in bed-linen-white as far as Harry can see. It smells like it’s about to rain.

“Let’s pick flowers.”

And they pick daisies, and clover, yellow dandelions, bright red poppy and put them all in a basket for later. Harry doesn’t let Gemma let go. She wants to go pick sunflowers, but Gemma doesn’t want to and hands her a lilac instead.

The dream turns vile. It has to be a dream.

Harry is kneeling, crouching over, small white petals all over the floor turning into glass. She knows this place. She knows it because it’s home. Her first home. She’s kneeling on the floor in the hallway, alone and it’s windy. The wind is so very cold and Harry can’t close her eyes. Every single petal turns into a piece of glass reflecting light that shouldn’t be there. She doesn’t know where all the glass is coming from. It’s making her sick.

Harry stands up. She wants to hide, wants to run outside, hide and wait for Gemma to come back, but Gemma is gone and Harry’s feet carry her somewhere else. Down the hall to her mum’s bedroom door that is half open, and where the light is coming from. She remembers knocking down something and feels incredibly guilty and ashamed.

She runs her hand along the wallpaper as she walks, digs her nails in, but Harry can’t slow down. She is walking towards the door. Maybe she isn’t walking anymore. She is just being pulled. The woodchip texturing the wallpaper makes her feel sicker. And the light coming from the room is starting to get too loud.

Amongst it all, in the blur Harry sees an unfamiliar figure standing in the shadows. He’s been watching her. 

There’s blood, and there’s her mother lying on the floor next to her fairytale bed that Harry loved to sleep in with her sometimes. There’s blood splattered on the sheets and a pool of blood spreading around her mother. It’s soaked into her nightgown and it’s still dripping out of her stomach and the back of her head. The smell of it suffocates her.

There’s so much blood and more shreds, and not enough air, or life, or anything. Harry stands there frozen. She presses both her hands against her ears and holds them closed, but she can’t do anything to dull the sound of her own screaming. Anything that hasn’t been broken yet breaks, and that makes it all worse.

She runs over and stops right before the growing puddle of blood, helpless, and clueless. Heaving. Not frozen anymore, in a nightmare, that has never been this vivid, or this non-blurred, but what does that do for her, when she can’t do anything. The figure is by the window, watching. He’s standing there calmly smiling at Harry, and the next moment he is gone.

Harry vomits.


	4. Chapter Three: The End

Harry vomits all over vaguely familiar, aubergine, ornament-patterned bedding. There’s a stinging sort of pain in her head, and she has no idea where she is. It smells disgusting, the vomit, as it seeps through the duvet cover and the bed sheet in a large puddle. Harry stumbles out of the bed. The blinds are half-shut leaving the room dimly lit, but she is starting to recognize her surroundings. The bedside table, the closet, and the two doors. It sounds like it’s raining. Harry can hear the prattle of raindrops against the windowsills and the roof of the house. There’s also yelling from somewhere.

The smell is getting really disgusting, quite acidic. It fills the whole room, and Harry decides to go to the bathroom.

The yelling, she notes, is coming from downstairs, and it sounds like Louis mostly. Harry locks the bathroom door. This is the house by the lake, which is technically still hers, probably. She thinks she knows what is happening. 

Harry is ok. She’s a little shaky, but she’s ok. Alive.

She contemplates going downstairs. What she is going to do now, how she is going to face this situation. Louis is yelling at Corden downstairs, in a corner of the kitchen, and Corden is, well, he is speaking louder than he usually does, when he gets a chance. Using her superhuman powers to eavesdrop is still strenuous.Harry considers staying up here, and just being, wallowing perhaps. She doesn’t really know, so she walks outside.

On the stairs, on one of the upper steps, sits Lottie. She is leaning against the wall, facing downstairs.

Instead of walking past her, down the stairs, or turning the other way around and going back into her room to go to the reading room, Harry sits down next to her. The steps aren’t that wide making them sit quite close. 

Harry doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t really have anything to say to Lotti. She’d known that Louis and Lotti had been keeping some kind of secret, but finding out that they are completely different people is actually, very different. She can’t join those two versions for Lottie she has in her head together, not quite.

She can easily understand what Louis is yelling downstairs with her normal hearing from here. (“She’s never gonna be save.” Lot’s of variations of “No, just - no! Definitely not.”)

Lottie takes in an audible deep breath, then another. “I’m the new Opes,” says finally says.

“That’s…” Harry has never heard of an Opes. “is that Latin for something?” It has to be something similarly weird and powerful like she is. Maybe it’s just a fancy name for the same thing. Harry shouldn’t even care. Why does she care about that? 

“Treasure and might. Or wealth.”

“Or maybe Greek.”

“That’s why,” a half-arsed hand motion “all this is happening.” Lottie sighs.

It’s why people want her dead, and probably why they assigned Harry to do it. Harry just sits there. 

Louis yells, there’s a loud noise and then some more yelling.

All this. The running away, and the fighting. All those missing pages and blacked out names in her file were killed because of Lottie. Or because someone is being a dickhead and her family died protecting her, or simply in the crossfire, collateral damage. Whichever way, it’s a sad story. A sad story Harry doesn’t really care about or need. She’s got plenty of sad of her own.

“I don’t, like…” Harry starts. 

“Yeah, I don’t really know what I expect you to say to that either,” Lottie throws her head back and lets out an exhausted breath. She keeps looking at the ceiling. After a while, she speaks: “Louis - she doesn’t want me to...fight, or whatever it is I’m supposed to do. She’s - she wants to protect me, is all. - Which is not really the point, I mean it’s gonna happen, right? So.”

It is. It’s plain logic, and anyone would be able to put two and two together and conclude that there was no other outcome really. She can also put together what and whom she had seen before she had woken up, however much she dreads it.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Lottie says. She sniffles but smiles right after. “Truth is...it all just goes to shit around me. All the time. It’s like I attract destruction - and death.” There’s a choked off sound that is somewhat reminiscent of a deranged laugh. A failed attempt at a laugh.

“There are people after you because of that...Opus thing. That’s what you’re attracting.”

“Same thing.” She wipes tears from her cheeks. “Everyone dies. I have these powers, and I can’t even do anything with them. It’s not any good at all. Everyone around me just keeps dying and I have no idea what I’m doing. No idea how to do this Opes thing.”

Harry feels like she shouldn’t be looking at Lottie when she is crying. Lottie is looking at her though. Harry turns away and looks forward, down the stairs.

“Listen...you can learn to use your powers and get better at it. Corden is an amazing teacher, speaking from experience.” Harry wants Lottie to stop crying. ”The thing is, with these things - this superpower stuff, a lot of the time the people we have to save, are we ourselves. Over and over again. Every single day and it doesn’t really seem like a big, heroic, good thing. Like a good use of those special powers, to just stay alive. But that’s just it sometimes.”

Harry doesn’t believe a word she is saying, but she wants Lottie to stop crying. The truth is that she’s been doing anything but thinking about herself. She’s been so tired of it all that she’d just closed her eyes and shut off her brain years ago. Thinking of all the people she killed doesn’t make her sick and she doesn’t think of people with families and lives and aspirations, because she is a professional and she doesn’t feel emotions, but she lost her professional status when she decided not to send that arrow through Louis’s eye, didn’t she. She is such a liar.

She’d been letting everyone else make decisions for her and about her, and she doesn’t really trust herself to start making them for herself again. Over and over again, every day. It has worked so far, kind of, but Harry has done horrible things. How does she justify that? How does she keep making the decision to stay alive, now that there’s no one she’s of use to anymore, to make it for her.

Well, almost no one. She has never claimed to have much self-worth, has she. Still, the wake of this - this thing that has gone far beyond a mission - is going to leave her either dead or alive, to live with the responsibility of all her decisions.

“Are you an Opes?” Lottie asks.

“No.” 

Harry feels like she’s said too much, regrets opening her mouth at all maybe, so she just stays silent now. 

“Good cry,” Lottie says. “ It’s good telling someone. Thanks.”

And then she stands up brushing imaginary dust from her trousers and walks down the stairs. At the bottom of the staircase, she turns around, smiling up at Harry. “You coming?”

Harry doesn’t. 

She watching Lottie disappear into the living room and waits a few minutes before she gets up. She stands there on the stairs and listens in on the conversation happening downstairs. Lottie had silenced the yelling, asked them what the plan is from here on. 

Harry takes delight in them not knowing, what she knows. Almost wants them to know that they don’t know, but Harry does. She really doesn’t want to go join them. She wants to be there sure, wants them to ask, she wants them to notice her, to fucking adress what happened and she refuses to be the one who does. She won’t go in there and tell them.

She manages to stay there for a while before she levitates and descends the stairs without making a sound. She lets herself back down to the ground right inside the living room where she leans against the wall. Louis is on the other side of the room, hands crossed over her chest, Lottie and Corden talking a few steps over. Harry thinks Louis sees her after a while and then makes a concentrated effort to look anywhere, but at Harry.

Harry just stands there holding her breath in protest. She watches the conversation, always on the brink of turning back into a shouting match again. Outside the rain is coming down in sheets. It’s loud and Harry can see it streaming down the glass front of the living room. It’s somber and there’s no telling what time of day it is.

“How did you find us so fast?” Lottie ask. 

Louis is pacing and biting her lip a lot. Also fiddling with the hem of her denim jacket. Her eyes are wandering around the room at a frantic pace, but never anywhere near Harry. It’s like the corner she is standing in doesn’t exist all of a sudden. Harry wants them, all of them to notice and acknowledge her.

“I mean, I knew where you were hiding, didn’t I,” Corden says.

The conversation reverts to discussing strategy, and Louis joins back in.

Still, no one is looking at Harry or acting like she exists. Corden ignores Harry until she clears her throat. It feels like losing, but Harry won’t admit that. Instead, she pretends to stare into the distance.

“Harry.” Is all Corden has to say. He doesn’t even turn around, just glances over his shoulder.

She’s got everyone’s eyes on her except Louis’ - which is really just Corden’s and Lottie’s - for a few moments.

“Holmes Chapel,” Harry speaks slowly. Another moment and an exhale that could pass for a sigh, then she looks at them. Looks at Louis, and Corden, and Lottie, one after the other. She hates herself a little, but it’s good to have their attention on her.

“I have information about our situation, that I think is important to share,” Harry pushes herself off the wall and starts walking towards them languidly. “With everyone.”

Louis rolls her eyes, and Harry narrows hers in return.

“He’s going to be in Holmes Chapel. Back home,” Harry says, mostly to Corden. “That’s where we’ll go, as for a plan. I saw it.”

“That’s good,” Lottie chimes in. “We’re going to need weapons, and we can figure out a strategy when we know more. Is there anything else you know? Did you see anything else?”

“The strategy is that you’re following my lead,” Harry says. “That’s the strategy.”

“Good, good.” Louis nods quite energetically. She is looking at her hands. Back to ignoring Harry it is then. “We’re going to Holmes Chapel.”

“Go ahead,” Corden says, and that’s what they all needed to break off the conversation. The guidance they had been waiting for and everyone scatters.

They grab weapons aplenty, some still strewn across the house. Harry takes her long black coat from the coat rack by the door. Putting it on feels weird, but right. She stretches her arms out to the tips of her fingers and relishes in the comfortable familiarity of it. It’s a pretty basic long winter coat, with a simple but elegant cut, that grants her more range of motion than you’d think at first glance.

***

They can’t take public transportation with all their weapons, so they borrow a car from one of Corden's angels. He’d offered to fly them there like they’d flown them back to the house by the lake, but it is raining. It was an unanimous vote for a mode of transportation with a roof. 

The car is a swanky black thing. Harry drives. It is an awkward, but thankfully not too long drive and Harry has the car radio turned on loud enough to keep anyone from trying to start a conversation at first. After twenty minutes of very loud top 40s hits interspersed with over excited chatter, two lines into the chorus of a song that had been introduced as Fight Song Harry turns off the radio.

It’s very quiet for a while except for the car's engine humming. They’re quite loud actually when they’re being driven, cars.  
“I’m sorry.” Louis says from the backseat, confidently but it ends up quiet against the sounds of the car. Louis and Lottie are both sitting in the back. Harry looks straight ahead at the road and at the town they’re driving through. “I am sorry that you found out this way and I realize that the timing was, well, horrible. I can’t apologize though.”

“What?” Harry says raising one of her eyebrows dramatically even though Louis can’t see her face. “You can’t just...I don’t know -- Lie?”

“No.”

There’s a red light.

“Ah,” Harry says tapping her fingers on the steering wheel impatiently.

“Would you at least fucking look at me Harry?” She turns around. Louis is leaning forward, her seat belt digging into her left shoulder. She is cradling ammunition for one of Harry’s few firearms in her lap. “Like I said, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything, and I guess I lied by omission there, but I’d do it again, in a heartbeat. I don’t regret it, and I-” 

There is a loud prolonged honk from behind them. Harry glares at the rear window. She hears Louis muttering a “fucking hell”. As much as she’d like to crush a car, Harry turns back around to face the light that has turned green. She crosses the junction instead of turning right and notices a second too late. It’s ok, she knows the area. It really doesn’t matter.

“Thing is,” Louis says, “I’d do exactly the same thing again, if I could go back.” She sighs.

At least Harry doesn’t have to look at Louis while she figures out what to say to that. She has tried, she really has and she does, but she can’t manage to hate her.

“It wasn’t even really her secret to tell,” Lottie says. “She told me not to tell you, but it was still not her place.”

Harry exhales. Everything is still there. She still wants to crush a car.

“And I- it’s, it’s not really safe to tell people,” Lottie says.

“I know.” Harry doesn’t know what else to say. She can hold her grudge, but it’s too late. She doesn’t like it one bit, but Harry knows too much to really hate them for it. 

“ I’m glad you know now,” Lottie says.

They spend the rest of the drive talking about their plan.

***

It’s not raining in Holmes Chapel, it’s snowing. The disgusting kind that starts melting upon contact with anything at all and leaves the world covered in a freezing, wet layer of snow-mud. Harry’s childhood home is on the outskirts of a small town. It doesn’t look like anything except for a bit of decay has changed since her and Gemma left. There’s the same large tree in the garden, right next to the house, only it’s barren and looks like it is drooping, like a flower.

There is no car parked outside, no mail in the post box, no light on in any of the rooms. Not a single sign of life. It has got the air of a haunted house. It’s abandoned but in a different way. This is not in the middle of a forest, a forgotten, old house. This one is ignored, and it’s waiting. It sends chills up Harry’s spine.

She pulls the car up on the gravel driveway that eventually turns into a smaller, winding pathway, wraps around an elegant ornamental fountain, no water except for a bit of melted snow on top of the dirt that had been collected at its bottom, and leads to the house. It has been a bit more than sixteen years since Harry had last been here and somehow it looks almost ancient, completely out of time.

Harry refuses to kick in the door. 

It’s not old and rotten enough to break and open itself at the merest hint of a touch, so they won’t. She tries to pick the lock, but it’s never been her strong suit and it is a slightly more secure lock than in your average front door. This kind of advanced technology, even from two decades ago, is exactly why Harry usually doesn’t waste time on trying to pick locks and finds another way in. They are not doing this to her former childhood home though, not when they are trying to look normal, and harmless.

“I bet I could kick it in,” Lottie suggests. “Subtly.”

“No,” Harry fiddles with the bent metal thing in her right hand and tries to make the exact same movement she’s been doing for the last few minutes look different.

Louis finds a rusted key under an empty, weathered flower pot. It stands on the floor next to the front door, only a little bit of soil, or maybe just dirt, left at the bottom. She holds the key out to Harry, who is still bent over in front of the lock in a not very inconspicuous position. The key would have never been there when she was still living here.

Their steps echo in the grand entrance hall when they first enter, it’s a dull echo. Harry just stands there taking it all in for a moment. The long white sheets weighed down by a layer of dust covering all the furniture. They don’t manage to lighten up the room. This is a dark place in some of Harry’s memories, and it’s like an exact reflection of all those. It could just be because of all of the layers of déjà vue Harry is experiencing right now, but the place has got an eerie air to it. 

“Kitchens on the left to the back,” She says to Lottie. “Curtains closed, light on and make sure you get out of there fast afterwards.”

Lottie nods and starts walking into the direction of the kitchen.

Harry doesn’t know how much time they have. It’s already getting dark outside, and she assumes it’s not much. She heads upstairs but stays put at the top of the stairs. She’s good in combat and she doesn’t feel entirely comfortable leaving Louis on the ground floor, but she knows where Xander is going to attack. Until then she is at least going to help Louis by throwing knives and throwing stars from the top of the stairs.

They go into position and then they wait. Harry concentrates, mostly on the moment. Blends into her surroundings a little and tries to be present for when they attack, instead of getting lost in trying to predict things. She doesn’t need to get lost in the future, Harry has a feeling it’s going to be emotional enough to live through all this once.

Her eyes are trained on Louis, standing confidently in the middle of the entrance hall, but she is focusing on the whole house with the rest of her senses.

They attack. First on the ground floor. Three men Harry should probably recognize.

Harry sees Louis hit the first attacker in the neck and kick him away from her, far eough to have time to shoothim. She’s good, Harry knows that and still. It’s not what Harry should be using her power on, but she can’t bring herself not to focus on Louis shoulder, where she couldn’t dodge fast enough. She sends healing Louis’ way, between throwing stars and making sure no one comes upstairs, past her.

It has only been a few moments when she perceives Xander arriving. There’s a loud bang downstairs, coming from the direction of the kitchen, that isn’t Louis shooting her gun. It’s louder, leaving a ringing in Harry’s ears. It has to be Lottie setting off the explosion. Harry doesn’t have the time to look if she is alright, because a moment later, she perceives Xander’s presence.

Harry walks into what used to be her mother's bedroom, now mostly empty with the bed having been gotten rid of afterwards. He is standing next to the window like he is waiting for her. The windowpane hat been shattered, maybe years ago maybe seconds. Harry feels like a little girl again in that moment, scared and overwhelmed. She knows that she isn’t helpless in this situation though.

She’s got two swords, a garotte, and one throwing knife left. And she’s got years of training, experience, and pent-up emotions.

“Was it you?” She asks, because she’s also got questions. One specific, slightly masochistic one. The part of her that doesn’t want to just get it over with and kill him already, just so she can stab the pile of dirt he is going to leave behind a couple more times, needs to know. She couldn’t really tell where her dream had ended and the premonition had started. “Who killed my mother.”

“Ah yeah,” Xander smirks, “that.” He huffs out a barely audible laugh, smirk turning into a content smile that makes Harry boil inside. “Your mother. That was in my burglary days. It was...random really,” Xander says walking from the window to where the bed used to stand. “Had no idea who’s mum I was killing, but then again - I don’t think you knew at the time either.”

It’s a game to Xander. Harry knows that. She knows that he knows how much he is riling her up and that it is all part of the fun for him. The house quakes beneath them. She doesn’t bother forcing herself to hold back anymore.

She runs and violently shoves him up against the wall right next to the window. The wall dents.

Sharp pain cuts her hands when she breaks her fall. Harry doesn’t care the least bit at the moment, but it’s deep enough to draw blood, and Harry is ready to paint Xander neon red with it.

The next thing she knows Harry is on her knees in front of Xander, and she rams the throwing knife into his knee. Just rams it in there and leaves it, takes a hold of it to hoist herself up again, which more or less doesn’t work, but she only staggers for a moment, then Xander sends her back to the ground again, properly this time.

She slides up to a wall with Xanders force. “You utter waste of fucking oxygen,” it starts off as a deep murmur ending in a yell as Harry stands up and charges at Xander.

***

Harry drags herself out into the hallway, to the staircase. It is weirdly quiet, as she focuses on kickstarting the healing process of some of her bigger wounds. She’s drained and it’s not much. 

The world around her slowly starts coming back into focus. There’s no one down in the middle of the hallway anymore, no Louis. Harry can’t see Louis anywhere, in fact. Instead, in one corner of the entrance hall with her back towards Harry stands Lottie. Sleeves of her jacket singed by the looks of it, but she is alive.

On the other side of the hall stands a woman. She is wearing different clothes, and her hair in a different way, but Harry recognized her. “I am an Opes,” the woman who had kissed her says into the empty room. The one from the fight in the forest. It is way too quiet. She is approaching Lottie, sauntering towards her almost, with a smile on her lips and the graze and complacency of a clearly superior predator. “By the way.”

Lottie just stands there.

It’s not good, what Harry has walked in on here. She is not sure, whether with all the determination in the universe, if she channeled it all, whether she could intervene right now though. If she could do anything. 

The woman stops a few steps in front of Lottie, and Lottie does nothing. Her hands remain by her sides. She doesn’t move.

“Like I thought,” the woman says, and that’s it, Harry thinks, it’s over.

She goes through the options in her head. She’s got nothing to throw, if she moves, if she makes herself noticed now, Lottie will most likely be dead before Harry can make it down the stairs. On a good day, when she is well rested, and not injured, and not exhausted, she could stare at the woman, and she probably couldn’t kill her, but she could do harm. Not now though. 

Harry is helpless, and she is watching that woman play her mind game with Lottie.

There’s a loud noise and suddenly Louis is there, gun in hand and and she keeps shooting at the woman. Bullets cut through the womans gut again and again and again. Louis fires until she’s out of amunition, even when the woman isn’t there anymore. Unlike the others her body doesn’t turn to ash. She falls to the ground and melts, bleeds almost, into a puddle of red around where her feet were, and seeps into the wooden floor. Harry isn’t sure what exactly just happened.

 

They are all still staring at the deep red puddle being absorbed by the floor when there are suddenly sirens in the distance. It sounds like police and there is no doubt who they are coming for. A neighbor must have called them. 

Harry picks herself up. She is in better condition already. “Time to disappear if you ask me.”

Louis ignores her. She is already running over to Lottie. She doesn’t say anything, just stands right in front of her. They look at each other.

Harry tries to give them their moment. She walks down the stairs, jumping down the last few. She starts looking for a dresser, tearing white sheets from the furniture that hasn’t been uncovered during the fight, and thankfully most of it hadn’t moved and is still the way she remembers from way back when she’d lived here. 

“Did you put out the fire in the kitchen Lottie?” Harry asks, bent over looking through a mostly empty drawer, and then the next one. Most of her memories are vague, especially when it comes to mundane things like furniture, especially dressers and drawers. She keeps looking. “And where the fuck do people keep lighters.”

“Was I supposed to?” Lottie asks after a moment and it breaks the silence between her and Louis.

“Good,” she says turning around. Louis produces a lighter from a pocket and holds it up in the air without averting her gaze form Lottie. Harry hadn’t thought of that. That’s good, very good. “ Hold on to that lighter, I’ll meet you outside in a second, go.”

Lottie doesn’t move. Neither does Louis, even when Harry points in the vague direction of the back door, and adds a nod just to make sure. Louis is still staring at Lottie, but she has to know that that’s not really important right now. Not when they have to get the fuck away from here. Now.

“If you really don’t want to go yet,” Harry says “there’s a - like a bar upstairs, with lots of alcohol,” - at least there used to be. “Smash it. And be quick, please.”

Everything is fast after that.

Harry goes to the basement to get some leftover spirit from when they used to have barbeques she doesn’t remember. None of the good stuff seems to have stuck.There’s also a gas pipe in the basement she finds. She doesn’t think it’d hurt to punch a small leak into it with the closest hard object.  
She pours a line with the spirit as she walks towards the backdoor. Louis and Lottie are waiting for her. Harry takes a moment to focus on healing one last time and then she drops the almost empty plastic bottle of spirit just inside the door hinge and steps out. 

It’s still snowing.

“I know, it’s a different house,” Harry says turning around to face the house. It’s her childhood home, not a random getaway. There’s also a somewhat small fire hopefully eating its way through it from the kitchen already. A bit like the smile that is forcing its way onto Harry’s face. She can’t help it. She smiles at Louis. ”Do you still feel like setting in on fire?”

Louis takes out her lighter. She smirks at her. The fire inside of Harry is crackling. Louis’s smirk turns into a full-blown grin. Harry bites her bottom lip, still grinning. She hopes this is going to work. They don’t necessarily need it to survive, but she’s never set a house on fire and she really wants this to work.

They all look at each other, Lottie, Harry and Louis. Louis lights the lighter. She steps closer to Harry holding it out in one hand and taking Harry’s hand with the other. She takes a breath and starts counting. Before she gets to three, Louis carefully throws the lit lighter onto the spirit soaked floor just inside the backdoor.

As the jet of flame erupts into the sky Harry has never felt more alive. At least she can’t remember feeling as alive as in that moment. She grabs Louis, and Louis holds on to her. The half-frozen raindrops hit the flames all around them looking like sparks, like the air and the clouds are catching fire, and they run.

***

The buzz dies down, the adrenaline fades. The news report that a fire in a vacant mansion in Holmes Chapel was put out before it could reach the forest or any of the surrounding houses.

It's over. They are all standing around at the edge of a field. Louis, Lottie, Harry and Corden. No one says anything for a long while. Harry’s feet are slowly sinking into the soaked, muddy ground.

“The police investigations are taken care of,” Corden says. He’d found them not long after they’d arrived here, walking down the path by the field, folded up telescopic umbrella swinging from his wrist. “I don’t operate under the state anymore, but they know me. I sometimes consult, when...strange things happen.”

Louis nods. “Thank you,” she says. It’s quiet, even with Louis standing right next to Harry. She didn’t whisper, didn’t lower her voice, but it’s so quiet in the all-encompassing deep navy of the night. Harry should probably do the same. Thank Corden, apologize, do something. She doesn’t.

It’s over, and slowly a different kind of fear settles in, takes up the empty space.

James Corden turns to Lottie. “My offer stands,” he says. Louis’ hold on Harry’s hand tightens but she doesn’t say anything. There’s a short pause. “Or I can offer you something else, all three of you. A shot at normalcy. A kind of witness protection, basically - just a little, less official.”

Lottie takes a deep breath. Louis huffs.

“It’s not just...over,” Louis says. “That’s not how it works.”

“It isn’t,” Corden says. 

Harry politely and quietly disagrees. They did it. She protected the Tomlinsons. Xander is dead and so are his people. They did it, and Harry doesn’t have anything to go back to, now that it is over.

“You are probably always going to be a target, no matter what you decide to do. That’s not in your power. Lottie, you’re welcome with the Angels, but you don’t have to, you don’t owe me anything.”

“Thanks,” Lottie says. Then a moment later: “I don’t know...what to do.”

“Let me know if you decide that you want my help,” Corden says. He undoes the velcro fastener on his telescope umbrella and shakes it out a bit.

“You have these powers because that’s who you are and they put you in a constant danger. That’s how it is, and you can’t change that, whatever you decide to do. It’s the one thing outside of your power.” He turns to look straight at Harry and it doesn’t matter that it is the middle of the night, somewhere in a field outside a small town or another, because this is James Corden and he looks straight into Harry’s soul no matter how poorly lit the surroundings are. He brings his free hand up and lays it on Harry’s shoulder. “Just like it is not in my power - and my power encompasses a lot - to make you do anything, or tell you what to decide.” 

He looks back at all three of them then, pushes the button on the umbrella to make it open. It’s chequered and looks flimsy. “What you can do is decide what you do with your powers,” he says swinging the umbrella around and over his head “You don’t have to use them at all. That’s an option too.”

“Thank you,” Harry says. It’s hard.

“Nothing to thank me for, Harry. I’m off.” Corden takes a few steps back, walking backwards down onto the gravelly path. “The police are waiting for a consultant,” he says before turning around. He walks away.

**Author's Note:**

> This is it. It's finished. I had an epilogue planned but I don't think I like the idea anymore.
> 
> Thank you for reading.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://abracandelabrum.tumblr.com/)


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